Joanne Thomson is an Actor, Writer and Director from Glasgow, Scotland.
 

Since graduating with a BA in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland she has also trained with the Groundlings Improv School in Los Angeles and the National Film and Television School on John Yorke’s TV Writer’s Academy.

She has worked extensively across the UK as an actor and has directed internationally award-winning theatre.

Her theatre credits as an actor include work with the National Theatre of Scotland, Bristol Old Vic, Citizens Theatre,  Birmingham Rep, Royal Lyceum, Traverse and the legendary Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

 

In 2022 it was announced that Joanne had been cast as new recurring character Amy McCallum in OUTLANDER with Sony/Starz before going on to join the cast of Synchronicity and CAA's latest feature film Kill. Prior to this, she played DS Lisa Harvey in BBC One’s BAFTA-nominated drama THE VICTIM, and her performance in ITV’s BAFTA-nominated IN PLAIN SIGHT won her 2 Best Actress nominations at the IARA awards. In 2019, she starred in BBC’s prime-time drama THE SUFFRAGETTES which won a BAFTA that same year.
 

While in LA, she was selected as a BAFTA Los Angeles Newcomer before being named as one of Glasgow Film Festival’s New Talents as a Writer/Director. Most recently she was chosen for the Traverse Theatre’s Breakthrough Writers Programme. Her passion lies in telling darkly comic stories with themes of queerness, sex positivity and abuse of power bubbling underneath.  Her writing has placed in several Screencraft competitions, made the BBC Writer’s Room Top 2% List, Olivia Colman’s South of the River & Sister’s Commendation List and won WWFC’s LA Pilot Accelerator in association with Netflix & HBO. 

 

Her queer, women-led pilot Spinner & Marie also won C21’s coveted Screenwriting Award at Content London in 2021 and she was since brought on to write the award-winning short Glasgow Town for Blazing Griffin starring Taggart’s Blythe Duff and directed by BAFTA-winning director Michael J Ferns.

 

Two of her other shorts are currently in post-production after previously both being shortlisted for £25,000 BFI Short Circuit funding: On the Twelfth Day of Findom, which she wrote and co-directed (execed by Blazing Griffin), and i before e which she was brought on to co-write, was cast by Des Hamilton and exec produced by Ken Loach's Sixteen Films.

 

Her debut play Jack in a Box was recently shortlisted for both the St Andrews Playwriting Award and Theatre 503’s International Playwriting Award before being chosen for The Royal Shakespeare Company's 37 Plays project.

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She's proud of all of the above but frankly f**king exhausted, so when things get too much you'll find her playing Pharaoh, the 1997 Egyptian city-building game. Her pyramid has 6 layers right now and she's very excited.

She also definitely didn't write this herself in the third-person.