She came through the same drama school as Paul Mescal, Alison Oliver and Éanna Hardwicke - but even for a Lir graduate, Ella Lily Hyland's rise feels rapid.
The Carlow woman stars in the primetime BBC One drama Towards Zero, debuting tonight, coming hot on the heels of roles in two other major British series in the past few months.
The 26-year-old has been hotly tipped since her breakthrough in the Amazon Prime series Fifteen Love in 2023.
In the tennis drama, she starred opposite Dubliner and Poldark star Aidan Turner and garnered acclaim for her portrayal of a prodigy and sexual abuse victim, the Guardian calling her performance 'absolutely superlative'.
Hyland's only small-screen role before that had been a minor part in the Channel 5 miniseries Intruder in 2021, but her next would put her opposite Hollywood stars Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw on the world's biggest streaming platform.
The actress played Irish assassin Williams in the Netflix series Black Doves, which came out late last year, and proved she could do comedy as well.
Hyland revealed she had channelled Love Island's Maura Higgins in bringing the character to life, but admitted she had worried about how the portrayal would be received online.
She previously told the Irish Daily Mail's You Magazine she had had 'this massive paranoia, for about a month of filming, where I was convinced I was going to be cyberbullied. Like I was convinced.
'It was just a fear of mine,' she said. 'I don't know why, because we'd have so much fun on set. Me and Gabi [Gabrielle Creevy, who plays Eleanor] would go in, have such a laugh, and then I'd go home and be like, "Oh my god, I'm going to be cyberbullied!"
'It's such a British [show] and I was just like, "I hope this [accent] fits into this." You know, even my vowels are more swollen, they're not as clipped, so the beats are different. I was overthinking it so much.'
Viewers next saw her in Stephen Knight's A Thousand Blows on Disney+ - another major streaming platform ticked off the list - though filming happened before Fifteen Love had even come out.
It seems reasonable to think she might have landed a bigger role had the shoot happened after the latest additions to her CV, and indeed there is scope for the development of the character with a second series in the works.
She has described Thousand Blows star Stephen Graham, who also appeared in Knight's Peaky Blinders, as 'probably one of my favourite actors of all time'.
'Just getting to be on set with him and act opposite him was a huge moment for me,' she said. 'And getting to chat about what the scene was with him. I was just like, "Oh my god."' Hyland graduated from the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin in 2020.
Gemma Bodinetz, who is director and CEO of the Lir, told the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday it has been 'such a joy to watch Ella Lily's career flourish since she graduated'.
'We're all so proud of her. Whether watching her in the lead role on the Abbey Theatre stage last year [in Grania] or increasingly on our screens, she is utterly transformed in every part she plays. We're all cheering her on here and so excited for her next project.'
