Sophie Turner is reflecting on becoming a parent in her early 20s.
“It just felt like the right break to focus on me because I’d been a character for so long,” Turner, 29, told The Guardian in a Friday, January 16, profile, referring to her acting hiatus after wrapping Game of Thrones. “Nesting and being at home was amazing, but the flip side of it, and COVID didn’t help, [that it] was … a big break from [my] career.”
Turner was 24 when she and her then-husband, Joe Jonas, welcomed daughter Willa in 2020. Turner gave birth to baby No. 2, daughter Delphine, two years later. (Jonas, 36, filed for divorce from Turner in fall 2023, which was finalized the following year.)
“I’ve had to try to rebuild, in a way,” Turner told The Guardian of her acting career postpartum. “You don’t realize how important momentum is in a career, and I stalled it a bit.”
The Steal actress has since found her acting mojo again, adding a plethora of roles to her booked-and-busy résumé.
“It’s really nice,” she added. “I’m not worrying about my biological clock and all that sort of stuff.”
Turner, notably, rose to fame playing Sansa Stark on HBO’s Game of Thrones when she was just a teenager.
“I learned how to act on that set, and now I’m thinking, ‘That’s not how to do it.’ That’s not what I do these days. It’s very embarrassing,” she recalled to the outlet. “Imagine if you were learning to sing, and all your lessons had been filmed and broadcast. It’s just an uncomfortable experience. I think the imposter syndrome remains, but I don’t think there’s any actor who doesn’t have that.”
Game of Thrones aired from 2011 to 2019, after which Turner kept getting approached to star in other historical or fantasy films and TV shows.
“I got sent so many period dramas about princesses who start off weak and end up learning and developing and growing into strength,” she said. “I had to separate myself from all that. After Game of Thrones finished, I didn’t know what was up and what was down. I needed to discover who I was.”
She continued, “A really important part of being an actor is to live a life so you have experiences to draw on. I remember having to act being in love before I’d ever been in love. I thought, ‘OK, I guess I’ll just do this.’ And then suddenly, when I’d been in love for the first time, then I knew the feeling. That’s part of the job — to sit in the discomfort of feeling so that we can bring it to the table.”
Turner, who began dating Jonas in 2016 at the height of Game of Thrones’ popularity, now balances her thriving career with motherhood.
“The mum guilt is there forever,” Turner told Net-a-Porter’s Porter in a profile published earlier this month. “I work all week and then, on the weekends, I’ll spend all day with my kids each day. But if I go out for lunch with a friend, I will run back home because my heart is sinking that I’ve left them.”
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