Maisie Williams's Real Name: Maisie Williams

Quick answer: Maisie Williams is known professionally as Maisie Williams. The Library of Congress heading is "Williams, Maisie, 1997-," based in part on a Game of Thrones video release. BBC News has reported that she was born in Bristol, grew up in the village of Clutton in Somerset, and became known as Arya Stark on Game of Thrones (BBC News; BBC News).

Real name and early life

A BBC Newsbeat interview published on May 8, 2014, described her as 17 and said she was born in Bristol. A BBC Points West report the following month said she had returned to her home village of Clutton in Somerset. Those details are consistent with the 1997 Library of Congress heading; a more precise date appearing in some databases is documented there only through IMDb and is not used in the title. The public name Maisie Williams is the name used in BBC coverage and in library catalogs.

Career highlights

BBC News reported that Williams was 12 when she first appeared as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which premiered in the United States in 2011 and was then shown in Britain on Sky Atlantic. The same report said the first season was filmed in a Belfast studio and on location in Northern Ireland, Malta, Scotland, Croatia, Iceland, and Morocco. In the 2014 interview she said the show's audience had grown gradually, which she felt had helped the younger cast, and that she had not been widely recognized during the first two seasons. Costars of the series have included Kit Harington and Peter Dinklage.

The same BBC report said a fifth and sixth series had then been commissioned, and that Williams described the character as a sword-fighting figure quite unlike herself. A June 2014 BBC report from Clutton recorded her recollection that she had nearly skipped the Game of Thrones audition because she wanted to go on a school trip instead. This page does not add later, unsourced credits beyond those BBC accounts and the Library of Congress Game of Thrones citation.

Name notes for searchers

Maisie Williams is the professional name used by the BBC and by the Library of Congress. Searchers looking for Arya Stark are usually aiming at the same person.