Amy Manson

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

Biography
Born and brought up in Aberdeenshire, Manson has a sister, Ailsa and a brother, James. She attended Stage Coach, a Saturday drama school, before leaving home for London at the age of seventeen. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, leaving early to film Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud in Romania. She has also appeared in the horror film Blood Monkey and the short film Smile Emily.

Manson 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 in episodes of Doctors, The Bill and My Family. Manson played Lizzie Siddal, muse, wife and lover of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in the BBC Two period drama Desperate Romantics. She appeared as the vampiress Daisy Hannigan-Spiteri in series two of Being Human, alongside Desperate Romantics co-star Aidan Turner.

Manson played Ginger Corrigan in the 2010 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Marple: The Pale Horse, and also played Fleur Morgan in Outcasts, an eight-part series by Kudos for BBC One. In 2011, Manson portrayed Leah in the third series of Misfits and Emma "Whirly" Tyson in the BBC drama Young James Herriot.

Manson won Best Performance (Female) at the 2008 Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, for playing Stepdaughter in the National Theatre of Scotland production of Six Characters in Search of an Author.