Kildare-born Aisling Bea began her career in acting but found her true calling in comedy, winning the So You Think You're Funny? award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2012, and being nominated for best newcomer in the following year's festival. Bea is best known for creating, writing, and starring in the his Way Up on Channel 4. She has also appeared on QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats - where she was the first female team captain - and Taskmaster, as well as many other panel shows.
Comedian plays a bride who marries her dead fiancé
Aisling Bea’s film And Mrs is to receive its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival next month.
The comedian stars alongside Tom Hanks’s son Colin in the ‘unconventional romcom’.
Aisling plays Gemma while Hanks is her American fiancé Nathan, who dies in the build-up to their wedding. But Gemma decides to marry him anyway – despite the objections of public opinion, the law and her own family.
Film-makers say the movie ‘explores fidelity, strength and the lengths we go to honour our commitments’.
And Mrs is the big-screen debut of Australian director Daniel Reisinger and has been written by written by London-based Australian Melissa Bubnic, whose credits include Shameless.
The cast also includes Billie Lourd, Peter Egan, Elizabeth McGovern, Harriet Walter, Paul Kay, Susan Wokoma and Divian Ladwa and features an appearance by stand-up Nish Kumar.
The movie was filmed in East London, at venues including Spitalfields Market and the Prospect Of Whitby riverside pub, last year.
Also having its world premiere at the festival – which runs from August 15 to 21 – is The Radleys, a dark comedy about a suppressed family of vampires, adapted from Matt Haig’s novel by of the same name by Jo Brand and writer Talitha Stevenson, and starring Kelly Macdonald and Damian Lewis.
The festival also features the UK premiere of Alice Lowe’s cenutries-spanning romcom Timestalker; surreal British comedy King Baby; and The Substance, a gore-filled comedy starring Demi Moore, as a Hollywood superstar facing the ageism and sexism of an industry that is swiftly forgetting her.
• The Edinburgh International Film Festival website is here.
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