Amy Manson

Amy Manson is the Scottish actress who will portray Merida on ABC's Once Upon a Time.

Biography
Amy Manson was born in Aberdeenshire, where she attended Westhill Academy and went to a Saturday drama school Stagecoach, until leaving home for London at age seventeen to pursue acting. After studying at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London, she left early to film Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud in Romania. She has also appeared in the horror film Blood Monkey and the short film Smile Emily. Her first professional theater role was in Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece of meta-theatre, Six Characters In Search Of An Author, portraying the lead character, Stepdaughter, at the National Theatre of Scotland. Amy later won in Best Female Performance at the 2008 Critics' Awards for portrayal of this character.

Amy has lent her voice to the radio dramas Lost in Plain Sight, The Summer Walking and The Dead Hour. On television, she played Alice Guppy in two episodes of Torchwood, and appeared as Abby Evans in nine episodes of Casualty. She has guest-starred on British television in the soap drama Doctors, police procedural The Bill and sitcom My Family. Her career also spans roles such as Lizzie Siddal, muse, wife and lover of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in the BBC Two period drama Desperate Romantics, the vampiress Daisy Hannigan-Spiteri in series two of Being Human, alongside Desperate Romantics co-star Aidan Turner, Ginger Corrigan in the 2010 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Marple in series four's episode, "The Pale Horse", and Fleur Morgan in Outcasts, an eight-part series by Kudos for BBC One. In 2011, Amy joined the third series of Misfits as Leah and in the BBC drama Young James Herriot as Emma "Whirly" Tyson.

Trivia

 * She is an pescetarian, and abstains from eating animal meat such as pork, poultry and beef, except fish and seafood.
 * Practices archery everyday to be ready for her role as Merida.