Biography

Sophie Shaheen Khan Levy (born 25 July 1989) is an English actress. Levy has appeared in Royal Shakespeare Company productions, such as Cymbeline (2013), Love's Labour's Lost (2014), A Midsummer Night's Dream (2015) and As You Like It (2019). In 2023, she was cast in the BBC soap opera EastEnders as Priya Nandra-Hart.

Levy was born in 1989 in Wandsworth, south London. Her mother is actress Shaheen Khan who starred in Bend it Like Beckham. She is of mixed race descent. Her mother, Shaheen Khan, set up Tara Arts, one of the country's first acting schools specifically for Asian actors. In her youth, Levy lived in Canada with her cousin for a year and a half. Levy graduated from the University of Warwick, after which she studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Whilst at Guildhall, she appeared in numerous stage productions, including As You Like It, Merrily We Roll Along and A Respectable Wedding.

Upon graduating from Guildhall in 2013, Levy appeared in Cymbeline, for which she received critical acclaim. She was then contracted by the Royal Shakespeare Company to appear in various productions. They described her as a "fiercely intelligent and brilliant actress". She performed in Hanna, a one-woman show, in 2018, for which she received numerous positive reviews. The Independent wrote that Levy had "a lovely unforced naturalness" and performed the play beautifully, while The Guardian admired her "compelling performance and sympathetic naturalness".

In 2022, Levy starred in three episodes of the Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. Then in 2023, she appeared in an episode of The Sixth Commandment, as well as being cast in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders as Priya Nandra-Hart.