Sonoya Mizuno

Sonoya Mizuno was born in Tokyo^[1][2][3] on 1 July 1986,^[4][5] the daughter of an English-Argentine mother and Japanese father.^[6] The family later moved to England, where she grew up in Somerset.^[7] She graduated from the Royal Ballet School before dancing with several ballet companies, including Semperoper Ballet in Dresden,^[8] Ballet Ireland, New English Ballet Theatre, and Scottish Ballet.^[7]

Mizuno took up professional modelling at age 20 with Profile Models in London. She has modelled for Chanel, Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent, and Louis Vuitton.^[7] In 2014, she appeared in Arthur Pita's work of dance theatre The World's Greatest Show at Greenwich Dance and the Royal Opera House.^[8][9]

While modeling, she took acting classes and made her film debut in 2014, in Alex Garland's science-fiction thriller Ex Machina,^[7] and in 2016 appeared in the dance film High Strung, directed by Michael Damian.^[8] Mizuno performed in the Dom & Nic video for The Chemical Brothers' "Wide Open", featuring Beck, where she played a dancer gradually transformed into a 3-D lattice. Later that year she appeared in the music video for Frank Ocean's song "Nikes".^[10][11][12] Also in 2016, she appeared in La La Land as one of the three roommates of Mia, played by Emma Stone.^[13]

In 2017, Mizuno appeared in a small role as the debutante in Disney's live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and in 2018, she acted in the Warner Bros. film Crazy Rich Asians.^[14]

She has appeared in television/streaming roles including Cary Joji Fukunaga's Maniac on Netflix.^[15] In 2018, she took the lead role of Lily Chan in Garland's miniseries for FX, Devs. In 2024, she appeared in the war drama Civil War. She has worked with Garland five times: as the lead of Devs, as a supporting character in Ex Machina and Civil War, and as a featured extra in Annihilation and Men.

Mizuno appeared on stage in Gareth Farr’s A Child of Science, which ran at the Bristol Old Vic from June to July 2024.^[16]