Amy Tara: Horror paints women really well… they’re actual people rather than just objects or eye candy

Amy Tara, currently in rehearsals for Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s new stage adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, never thought being an actor was on the cards. “I never saw people who looked like me on screen and I didn’t really grow up going to the theatre,” says Tara, who was born in Dubai and is half-Indian. “It just wasn’t a career choice.”

Still, as a child, she was a “creative person”. “I’ve always found academics really hard; creativity was an escape for me,” she says. So she threw herself into horse riding, sports and drawing. After school, she was set to study fine art and curation. Then, during a gap year at 18, she decided to take her hobby of acting seriously. “I just took the risk. I auditioned for drama school and, yeah, I was lucky.”

That leap took her to Arden School of Theatre in Manchester, where she “loved” her training. She graduated in 2023 and has started to carve out a career in theatre and on screen. She mentions playing Ophelia in Hamlet at Gatehouse Theatre in Stafford last year — “the role of a lifetime… she gets a love story, she gets to sing a bit, she gets to die, she’s only on for about 20 minutes!”

Tara’s speciality, though, is horror. Her role as Cassie in GroupChat won her the Best Actress award at the British Horror Film Festival last year, and now she’s stepping into the eerie world of The Turn of the Screw as the governess. “I think horror paints women really well… they’re actual people rather than just objects or eye candy,” she says.

Saying yes to Lloyd Malcolm’s version was a no-brainer. “The governess is really strong; she fights back,” she says. “She is a great role model for young women and how we should all be standing up for ourselves.” During rehearsals, Tara and director Nicky Allpress have focused on giving her “a backbone”.

Despite working pretty much consistently since leaving drama school, Tara treats every day she’s acting as if it were her “last one”.

“I don’t really see it as my career yet. I’m just here to have fun. Actors are the most ambitious people I know — and also the most deluded, because this industry is crazy.” Even with all of her success over the past few years, she never thought she’d be here. “There was always that sense of doubt. As an actor there’s a lot of rejection, and you have to be resilient”.

Her heritage is always on her mind, too. “I want younger audiences to see themselves on TV or in theatre and think that it is normal.”

After living in Manchester post-graduation, Tara is now something of a “nomad”, moving between cities. “I just go where the work takes me,” she says. Tara finds being onstage transformative. “You’re in a different world. You can’t think of anything else. You’re just there to tell the story.”