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Joanna Pickering is a multi-award-winning British actress and playwright represented by 3 Arts Entertainment. She has sold out multiple stages in New York City, London, and Paris. Her plays are available at The Drama Book Shop, Google Books, and Next Stage Press. Lara's Journey live-streamed from New York City to over one million viewers with Pickering performing via internet star Natalia Kholodenk in a collaboration with artists to raise awareness for Ukraine-other artists include Gloria Gaynor and Kathy Sledge. The play is sponsored by Nova Ukraine for benefit readings. Pickering's others works, all of which she has performed in, include Bad Victims, The Endgame, Cat and Mouse, Sylvie and Sly, award-winning play Beach Break, and her debut one-woman show, Don't Harm The Animals. In 2025, Pickering secured an unprecedented three-play advanced deal to star in her own one-woman shows: Crash Landing, Cease and Desist, and Laughing in the Dark, to be produced by a Broadway award-winning team, commencing off-Broadway in 2026.
As a film actress, Pickering has won six Best Actress awards on the independent circuit at the New York Women in Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Awards, The Actors Awards, among others for her work in the short film Diva (full list on imdb). In 2024, she was nominated for Best Performance of the Year at The Actors Awards. She has worked on over 30 independent films worldwide. She has starred in lead roles opposite A-list stars, such as Alice Eve, in independent film Pelleas, which screened at The Whitney Museum in New York City and was featured in Vanity Fair magazine. She has also taken on smaller roles in prominent films like Danny Boyle and Irvine Welsh's Creation Stories, which covers Britpop and the rise of Oasis and Creation Record's Boss. Additionally, she has co-starred alongside Blanche Baker (The Handmaid's Tale) and William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption). Trained in Method Acting at The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, she is experienced across film, television, radio, and stage.
In 2020, she wrote her first short film Boardwalk that screened at The Anthology Film Archives. In 2021, her trilogy Truth, Lies and Deception debuted as a reading at The League of Professional Theatre Women, featuring performances by TV and Broadway actors Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years) and Caroline Aaron (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). The trilogy includes debut plays Cat and Mouse, Sylvie and Sly, and award-winning Beach Break. The plays tackle themes of sexism, assault, and ageism. The trilogy first ran as a staged production at Le Pavé d'Orsay Theatre in Paris in December 2021. Pickering played a lead role alongside Robert Bradford, Koel Purie, and Eugenia Kuzmina, directed by Christopher Mack and Pulcherie Gadmer. Angela McCluskey provided music. The plays were described as "brave, masterful, and suspenseful, with comical dark interchanges." Cat and Mouse was reviewed as controversial for approaching its subject matter from an untouched angle, and Pickering's performance was described as "powerful and sophisticated."
In 2021, Pickering published the trilogy with Next Stage Press, joining a roster of new and Tony Award-winning writers. The publishing website received 5/5 star reviews.The plays were released in August 2021. Cat and Mouse was read with Pickering and Dan Lauria at The Drama Book Shop in New York in 2023, where it is currently stocked.
In 2022 and 2023, her play Bad Victims, in which she performed the lead role, sold out at The Courtyard Theatre in London for two consecutive runs. Directed by Erica Gould (Neil LaBute, Theresa Rebeck) and co-starring Richard Emerson (West End Chess, ENO Coliseum), Bad Victims was featured in press outlets such as Broadway World and Off-West End as a thriller centered around sex, power, and crime-picking up where psychological thrillers like Promising Young Woman and Anatomy of a Scandal left off. Pickering's writing style was described by peers as "Sarah Kane meets Noël Coward, with the deviousness of Phoebe Waller-Bridge to flip a scenario on its head." The play was re-booked by popular demand for a second run in early 2023, starring Pickering.
In 2022, Pickering's play The Endgame, a one-act play, was developed and announced as part of the Women's Work Lab Festival with The New Perspective Theatre Company before transferring to Paris for a presentation with The Big Funk Company. The play takes place over a game of chess and addresses acquaintance rape. Audiences described it as "gripping" and "so intense you could hear a pin drop."
In 2023, Pickering wrote and performed her first one-act solo show, Don't Harm the Animals. It had its premiere run at The Chain Theatre in New York and was audience reviewed as "shocking and powerful." This success led to the first commission for Pickering's full-length one-woman play, Laughing in the Dark, with Tony Award-nominated Broadway producers, who cited to press that Pickering was "a more exciting Spalding Gray." In 2025, they announced Pickering's second solo full play, Cease and Desist, opening off-Broadway at Theater 555 in New York. The play is described as a startling take on the psychological thriller.
In March 2025, Pickering debuted a new one-act solo play, Lara's Journey, at The Chain Theatre in New York. The play tells the story of a displaced Ukrainian refugee and was directed by Karen Lynn Carpenter. In May 2025, the play was presented by Ukrainian internet star, psychologist, and TV presenter Natalia Kholodenko, who streamed it to over one million people live on social media. It was included alongside Kholodenko's collaborations with Gloria Gaynor and Kathy Sledge and anthems "I Will Survive" and "We Are Family" to support refugees. The play was then cast with Ukrainian actress Yeva Sevruikova for a benefit reading on World Refugee Day in 2025 at The Center at West Park. Other benefit readings to help save the landmark, include Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and Scarlett Johansson. The play then presented at a benefit reading at Festival Off Avignon and received a stand-out review as "a masterpiece" and "surpassing the other plays" by accredited festival press.
Other work includes, Pickering was cast as the lead actress in the experimental feature film Kubricks, directed by Dean Cavanagh and produced by Creation Records boss Alan McGee (Oasis, Primal Scream) alongside Roger Evans (The House Of The Dragon). She also starred in the music videos "City of Tales" by The Band of Holy Joy and is the album cover model for their 2015 release City of Tales. For Spectorbullets, she is the album cover model and actress in the 2010 music video "Goldmine," and she wrote the lyrics for the song "Drop" on their 2012 album, which was reviewed positively with 5/5 stars (in The Scotsman). In 2018, she was a participant speaker and selected filmmaker at the United Nations for Create2030, engaging artists in Sustainable Development Goals and attending UNNIGO 2018 and UNGA 2018. She moderated the Imagine This Female Film Festival and serves on the Female in Film panel for the New York Independent Film Festival, as well as on the jury and advisory board for The Chelsea Film Festival in New York.
In early life, Pickering went to La Sagesse Convent School and was taught by nuns until she was sixteen and then went to Central Newcastle HIgh to study science. She gained a degree in Pure Mathematics at the university of Stirling. She then sold high performance cars and yachts in the South of France to fund acting school at Lee Strasberg Theater Institution in New York City.
Pickering is a member of The Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit, The Actors Gym, The International Centre for Women Playwrights, The League of Professional Female Playwrights, and NPTC's Women's Work Lab. She is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment, Metropolis Agency, and Talented in Paris, and is a member of SAG-AFTRA.
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