Adele in the Netflix series ‘Behind Her Eyes’

Eve Hewson | Biography 2021

 Anna Wetherell in the Miniseries 'The Luminaries'

• By Puja Bhetwal
• Update : July 15, 2021

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Actress Eve Hewson is best known as the star of the British-New Zealand drama TV miniseries The Luminaries and Netflix originals Behind Her Eyes. She made her acting debut with the short film Lost and Found. She has starred in popular movies such as This Must Be the Place and Robin Hood.

Who is Eve Hewson?

Hewson commenced her acting career in 2005 with the short film  Lost and Found alongside her sister Jordan.

Since her debut, she has appeared on both small and big screens with titles such as the 2011 film This Must Be the Place, the 2013 thriller film Blood Ties, the 2014 TV series The Knick, the 2015 Cold War movie Bridge of Spies, and the 2018 reimagining of Robin Hood.

In 2020, Hewson portrayed Anna in the drama film The Luminaries. The following year, he featured Adele in the Netflix Original series, Behind Her Eyes.

Daughter of Bono and Ali Hewson

Memphis Eve Sunny Day Hewson was born on 7 July 1991 in Dublin, Ireland. She was the second daughter of anti-nuclear activist Ali Hewson and U2 lead singer Bono. She was named Eve—the middle part of the word seven— since she was born at 7 a.m. on 7 July 1991.

Hewson has an older sister named Jordan. Elijah and John are her two younger brothers. She proclaims that she learned about relationships from her parents—who are together since she was age 15. Her parents are still close with their friends from high school.

Subsequently, Hewson is proud of her Irish upbringing and relates that she “couldn’t have had a better childhood.” She is thankful to her parents, who taught her to surround herself with “good people.” She is also grateful towards her parents’ support of her ambition to pursue acting against their dream to make their daughter a lawyer. She says she doesn’t know what she “would’ve done” other than acting.

Hewson studied at the Dalkey School Project. She was best friends with Sorcha Richardson (now a famous Irish folk singer) from the age of four. She proudly recalled, “So she was my mate and I would become friends with all of her friends, and it kind of continued like that.” Later she would enter Saint Andrew’s College in Dublin. 

Early Career: ‘Lost and Found’ and Tisch Audition 

Hewson was exposed to acting at a young age. While her parents were away on tour for three months, they had hired an independent filmmaker named Erica Dunton as Hewson’s study tutor. “I was acting as a child in drama groups. I had a school tutor who my parents hired to teach me how to do my homework, and focus and pay attention, because I was not the best student at the time. I was about 13. She was actually a filmmaker and she tutored on the side,” Hewson recalled.

Dunton, at that time, was working on a short film, and Hewson frequently assisted her in the set. Then once, the director asked Hewson to appear in one of the takes as they were on the set. The director was mesmerized by 13-year-old Hewson behind the lens and suggested Dunton get her involved in any possible acting gigs. Eventually, Dunton wrote a character for Hewson in one of her upcoming films, which would become Hewson’s debut movie, Lost and Found, in 2005.

After getting the stint in the movie, Hewson decided to pursue her career as an actress against her parent’s advice, who urged her to be a lawyer. She recalled, “I wanted to be a real actor, you know like Meryl Streep and go to grad school … my parents said you can only apply to Tisch [New York University’s famous school of the arts] and you probably won’t get it, so good luck.” 

But then, despite being extremely nerve wrecked on the day of the audition at The New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Hewson pulled through her monologues and gave her best. Then after returning home that day, she felt as though she had swallowed Tischher’s nerves and needed to vomit to bring them back. And at that moment, her parents came to realize her level of dedication in acting. She eventually passed the Tish audition while also studied psychology as a backup for her career.

Subsequent Career

Series of supporting roles followed her graduation, and she worked on numerous TV programs. She appeared in the drama film, The 27 Club—a 27-year-old singer who committed suicide—in 2008.

In 2010, the young star appeared in The Script’s music video for the song ‘For The First Time.’ In the same year, Hewson starred in a leading role alongside Sean Justin Penn in the movie This Must Be the Place.

In 2013, Hewson starred in the thriller film Blood Ties and also in the romantic comedy Enough Said as the daughter of James Gandolfini’s character Albert.

Subsequently, she succeeded in getting the central role of Lucy—a young nurse who needs to get acquainted with the hospital—in the TV series The Knick. Acting in The Knick was particularly difficult for her since it was one of the most realistic works.

In 2017, she appeared in the biographical drama film, Papillon. Following the year, she was cast in the Canadian romantic drama film; Paper Year, a film about a couple’s problems during their first year of marriage. In 2018, Hewson played Maid Marian in the Otto Bathurst version of Robin Hood in the autumn of 2018.

‘The Luminaries’

Then in 2020, Hewson was cast as one of the leading characters in the miniseries The Luminaries, based on Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name. The show was BBC One broadcasted, British-New Zealand drama, directed by Claire McCarthy.   

Plot

In the show, Hewson plays the role of Anna Wetherell, a mysterious young explorer and the protagonist of the series who narrates and unravels her disparate perspective during the journey of a party of men and women moving to New Zealand in the hopes of making a fortune during the West Cast Gold Rush.

Portraying Wetherell, she acted alongside the prominent French actress Eva Green with whom she became very close while creating their respective character chemistry. Green played Lydia Wells, a smart, risk-taking entrepreneur who owns Fortune parlor in New Zealand and has high connections. 

“We actually ended up having a lot of fun because that dynamic with the relationship is slightly messed up and sadistic. I’m on the other end of the spectrum, with the character of Anna. We did loads of rehearsals together. I think I went out to New Zealand a month before, and we talked through all of the relationships and we put it on its feet a lot. It was a very different kind of grueling experience, actually, but I think it really served the show and the relationship,” she said. 

Hewson also stated that she needed to color-code her notecards accordingly to keep track of the characteristics she was supposed to show on different drugs her character would take. “I had this really nice house in New Zealand, and on my kitchen wall I mapped out the entire show, every scene on notecards. I had my notecards color-coded with orange is for laudanum, then pink is for opium, blue is for the hangover, green is for sober. So I could track what I was going to be doing in the scene, how loose I was, how sedated I would be, all of those things.”

‘Behind Her Eyes’

After that, in 2021, Hewson appeared in another novel-based character in the Netflix series Behind Her Eyes. The series was based on Sarah Pinborough’s novel of the same name. In the show, Hewson was cast as the lead character, Adele.

Plot

The show follows a single mother journey who has an affair with her employer and develops an unlikely relationship with his wife, played by Hewson. According to Hewson, Adele is a housewife who ‘isn’t the type’ the audience expects her to be.

“I genuinely loved this character so much, mainly because of the twist. I’ve never had more fun playing a character in my life. If I could play Adele until the day that I’m dead, I wouldn’t care.” She further added her fascination with being able to portray and also the process of portraying the intense features of Adele on the show. “I was concerned that I wasn’t going to be able, on a very busy TV schedule, to get up to those heights of rage and anger and frustration as quickly as I needed to. I remember, in drama school, a teacher telling us that one of her students was playing a murderer, and she made him bring in a watermelon and smash it up so that he could feel what it was like to smash in someone’s skull, the rage that you needed to actually do that to someone. It was really about your physical behavior informing your emotional behavior. So I asked props to get me a bat and a pillow. We had that with me on set every day. And when I had to get really into it and get really upset, I would whack away at that pillow like a mad woman just before they called ‘action.’ And then I’d throw it away, and we’d go into the scene.”

Personal Life

Hewson was in a four-year relationship with the One Tree Hill actor James Lafferty, but they broke up in 2015. Not long after that, she dated English actor Max Georgio Choa Minghella, but the relationship did not last long. 

Did you Know?

• Hewson changed her name from Memphis Eve Sunny Day Hewson to Eve to avoid being bullied in high school.
• Once in her childhood, Hewson stole her father’s address book and prank-calling celebrities listed on it. One of her victims was the infamous singer Justin Timberlake. During the call, she continued asking him trivia questions from the back of a cereal box. “It was one of the best moments of my life. He just kept answering. must be a very competitive person. He was charmed by us,” she recalls. 
• Hewson is close with her elder sister Jordan, who has often given her dating advice. Jordan has dated French talent agency entrepreneur  Jerome Jarre and actor Diego Osorio in the past.
• According to Celebritynetworth, Hewson's estimated net worth is $8million.