Sian Clifford (born 7 April 1982) is an English actress. She is best known for playing Claire, the older sister of the titular character in the BBC comedy-drama series Fleabag (2016–2019), Martha Crawley in the ITV/Amazon Studios series Vanity Fair (2018), and Diana Ingram in the ITV series Quiz (2020).
For the second season of Fleabag, Clifford won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance, and received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series as well as a Critics' Choice nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
Her theatre credits include Consent at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Pains of Youth at the National Theatre, and The Road to Mecca at the Arcola Theatre.
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Early life
Clifford was born in London on 7 April 1982, the daughter of an executive assistant mother and a father who worked for the local council. She grew up in the London borough of Ealing. She has two brothers, Alex and Elliot, and a sister, Natalie, who is an art dealer in New York City.
Growing up, Clifford knew she wanted to be an actor and participated in youth theatre from the age of six. She hated school and saw theatre as an escape.
After school, Clifford worked for three years as a writing consultant before being accepted into Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for a BA degree in acting, having been turned down twice previously. While attending RADA, she met her future co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge early on and they became friends. The two "“made a silent pact” that if one of them became successful first, they’d “help the other one out”." She graduated from RADA in 2006.
Career
2006–2015: Early career and theatre
In the first ten years of her professional acting career, Clifford became a prolific Off West End actress. In her first few years out of drama school, she was involved with Theatre503 in which she was involved the productions Without Laughing, Contraction, and Listening Out. In March 2007, she acted in the play Not the End of the World at the Bristol Old Vic theatre. Her first notable performance was playing Ismene in the Nottingham Playhouse production of Burial at Thebes at the Barbican, which premiered in September 2007.
In summer 2008, she acted in a play called The Pendulum, written by her co-star Alexander Fiske-Harrison, at the Jermyn Street Theatre in the West End, which ran for the month of June, and in the following month she took part in the annual Latitude Festival in the play Public Displays of Affection. Clifford was in three theatre productions the next summer: in June, she had a small role in a chamber opera titled Parthenogenesis at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio, she co-starred in the Arcola Theatre play The Road to Mecca, and she toured with the production Is Everyone Okay?, which co-starred future Fleabag castmate Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Throughout September 2010, Clifford starred in the well-reviewed experimental theatre piece Pieces of Vincent at the Arcola Theatre. For the rest of autumn 2010, she had a supporting role in the play Pains of Youth at the Royal National Theatre. Finishing out the year, Clifford held the titular role in an original production of Beauty and the Beast, also at the Royal National Theatre. The production ran throughout the Christmas season and was critically successful.
In 2014, she was one of the stars of the Nottingham Playhouse's production of Time and the Conways. Also that year, she took part in Good. Clean. Fun., a collection of short plays by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which includes an early version of Clifford's Fleabag character Claire, as well as the Victorian-era play Fever at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Clifford had previously played the role of Claire in a sketch of Waller-Bridge's called "Use Your Vote", which consisted of two sisters attending a feminist lecture, and Clifford reprised this role several times.
In 2015, Clifford started Still Space, a blog and platform where she shared information and thoughts about mindfulness and meditation. As part of this, she published an article in Psychologies Magazine and won the Hay House publishers' "New Wise Voice" award in 2016. Her last post (as of August 2026) was on 7 April 2024.
2016–present: Fleabag, television, radio and theatre
In 2016, Clifford had her breakthrough screen acting role in Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, as Claire, Fleabag's uptight older sister. Waller-Bridge wrote the character of Claire with Clifford in mind, and Clifford said she fought the BBC to include her in the series, having wanted someone famous to fill the role. Fleabag returned in 2019. Clifford's performance in the show was widely praised and she was nominated for the Emmy Award for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and the Critics' Choice Award for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance. In 2020, she won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for the series. She was also nominated for the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actress (which Waller-Bridge won).
In 2017, Clifford was part of the cast of the play Gloria at Hampstead Theatre, which was the play's Off West End premiere.
In 2018, Clifford had a recurring role in the ITV miniseries Vanity Fair and was in a production of Circle Mirror Transformation in Manchester.
Later in 2018, Clifford was part of the cast in the West End production of Consent at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
In 2019, Clifford had a small role in the independent dark comedy film A Serial Killer's Guide to Life. In 2020, Clifford had guest roles on the television shows Hitmen on Sky One and Liar. She starred as Diana Ingram opposite Matthew Macfadyen (who played Charles Ingram) in the April 2020 miniseries Quiz, based on the 2001Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? scandal. Clifford later co-starred in the Sky comedy series Two Weeks to Live.
In 2021, Clifford starred in the romantic comedy Good Grief, a hybrid of theatre and film produced in the context of the covid pandemic. It was written by Lorien Hayes, directed by Natalie Abrahami and featured music composed by Isobel Waller-Bridge.
In May 2021, Clifford starred as Iris in the Inside No. 9 episode "Lip Service". In July 2021, Clifford voiced GS-8 in Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
Personal life
Clifford is a vegan and practises daily meditation. In 2016, she launched a digital wellness and meditation platform called Still Space.
