Why Amelia From The Perfect Couple Looks So Familiar

If you're anything like us, you've already torn through all six episodes of Netflix's "The Perfect Couple." Based on Elin Hilderbrand's 2018 novel, the gripping miniseries follows a murder mystery centering around a wealthy family in Nantucket. After a guest is found dead the morning of a wedding at the family home, a whole lot of secrets are uncovered — along with, of course, the murderer. Eve Hewson stars as Amelia Sacks, the bride, who doesn't quite fit in with her husband-to-be's family — especially his mother, Grier, played by a very British Nicole Kidman. The roster also includes Dakota Fanning, Liev Schreiber, and "White Lotus" breakout star Meghann Fahy. Needless to say, it's got all of us absolutely hooked. 

While "The Perfect Couple" is a major addition to her filmography, it's certainly not Hewson's only acting credit of note. The Dublin-born actor got her start in showbiz as a teenager. "Once I did my first film, at 15, I didn't want to do anything else," she later told The Guardian. Wondering where you've seen Amelia from "The Perfect Couple" before? Well, we've got you covered. Let's get into why Eve Hewson looks so familiar.

Let's get right to it: Eve Hewson is a celebrity kid with a very famous parent. Born in 1991, she is the daughter of U2's frontman, Paul David Hewson, aka Bono. "I was always surrounded by really artistic, inspiring people and that's really rubbed off on me," she said to Dublin Live of her father's influence.

While her connection to one of the most successful rock bands in music history may precede her, Hewson doesn't seem too worried about the nepo baby discourse. "Only the media describes me as 'Bono's daughter.'  Only the media gives me that s***,'" she said to The Guardian. "In the rest of my life it doesn't happen. I can't do anything about it. I have no say in it." 

That said, Hewson's the first to acknowledge that her dad has been a boon for her career. When New York Magazine published a story about the rise of the nepo baby in late 2022, she jokingly tweeted, "Actually pretty devastated i'm not featured in the nepo baby article like haven't they seen my hit show 'Bad Sisters'??? The NERVE." She later acknowledged her "privilege" in a followup tweet, writing, "I have always been very keen to state how much my father's name helped me get a start in acting" (via Independent). On a 2024 episode of "Today," she shared that Bono's industry know-how comes in handy, cheekily adding that he's "the male Kris Jenner." 

Eve Hewson landed her first role in "The 27 Club" in 2008. This was followed by several short films and a music video. However, it wasn't until 2011 that she got her first notable role playing Mary in Paolo Sorrentino's "This Must Be the Place." She landed the part while studying acting at NYU. Getting the job was, as she told AnOther Magazine, "one of the most monumental experiences of my life."  

In the film, Hewson played Mary, a teenage friend of Sean Penn's Cheyenne, a former rock star. As the daughter of Bono, it wasn't exactly unfamiliar territory for the young actor. As she put it, "I grew up having great relationships with my parent's friends, so I'm used to having a really personal relationship with someone twenty or thirty years older."

Although the film was her first major project, she was lucky enough to return home to Dublin for the shoot. "It's actually been very comforting as I know exactly where I'm going and I'm staying at home," she said to Female.com.au. "It's helped me feel comfortable on set."

After her first film, the projects just kept coming. In 2013, Eve Hewson landed a small part in "Blood Ties." Then, that same year, she got her next large role in "Enough Said," a Nicole Holofcener film that also starred the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, and Toni Collette. Hewson played Tess, the daughter of Gandolfini's Albert.

According to Hewson, she made quite the impression on Gandolfini thanks to the way she ate on camera. "I ate food in a scene and he said, 'I'm so proud of you. Never change,'" she recalled to The Guardian. "So many actors pretend to eat. He taught me so much. I loved him." 

Louis-Dreyfus also left a lasting impression on the up-and-coming actor. "I've never worked with a lot of comedic actors, so she was kind of my first experience of that and I learned lot from her, I learned a lot from, like, her improv, and the way that she acts in between scenes," Hewson said in an interview with TVGuide.

In 2014, Eve Hewson landed another huge role — this time in "The Knick," an HBO period medical drama created by acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh. She played Nurse Lucy Elkins alongside co-stars Clive Owen and André Holland. Set in New York at the turn of the 20th century, "The Knick" followed the dramas of a Harlem hospital. 

In a 2015 chat with Time, Hewson admitted she was shocked when she found out she'd landed a major role in the HBO show. "Usually when really cool, interesting projects get sent to my inbox, I'm usually never successful at getting the part, so it was exciting," she said. Hewson went on to note that she not only felt honored to not only work with Soderbergh, but do her best to keep up with his extra quick filmmaking style. "I didn't know how lucky I got, because Steven is using three brains at once — he's the editor, he's the cinematographer and he's the director — so everything we do is at his pace," she gushed. "He likes to work really fast, so I've learned to adapt to that, and I have to think on my feet."

Critics were blown away by the young actor's performance. "The drop-dead gorgeous Hewson pulls off an awesome hat trick, somehow bringing both angelic naiveté and steaming sensuality to Lucy and adding a blazing blast of intelligence," wrote one for TV Insider. "The result is deeply, endlessly fascinating."

In 2015, Eve Hewson landed a small role in one of the biggest films of the year, Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies." The Cold War epic featured an all-star cast that included Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, and Alan Alda. It received six Oscar nods, including a nomination for Best Picture. Hewson played Carol Donovan, the daughter of Tom Hanks and Amy Ryan's characters.

At the world premiere of the film, Hewson gushed about her experience working with Spielberg and Hanks. "They're the dream team of Hollywood I think," she told Flicks and Clips on the red carpet. "Steven is the king of Hollywood. You know, when I got the audition and I got the meeting with him I really couldn't believe because I'm so new in my career and I'm just really, really lucky that they liked me and they chose me for it. Working with Tom was incredible."

As of 2024, it seems that Spielberg and Hewson might be preparing to join forces again. According to a September 2024 report from The Hollywood Reporter, she is currently in talks to star in his upcoming "event film."

After a series of increasingly big projects, Eve Hewson took a step in another direction in 2018, starring in the Canadian indie film "Paper Year." She played Franny Winters, daughter of Andie MacDowell's Joanne. The movie is a romantic dramedy, and as it turned out, she took to the comedic pieces like a duck to water. "I was like, oh, yeah, I'm good at this," Hewson said to The New York Times. "I should do more of this."

As the film's creator Rebecca Addelman told Collider, she cast Hewson after an hours-long heart-to-heart over Zoom. "She's an awesome person, and she's a killer actor," Addelman said. "She's very open. I don't know what we expect from a rock star's daughter, but she's really down to earth, and she's got that Irish charm and wit."

Once again, Hewson impressed the critics. "In 'Paper Year,' Hewson has only a couple of hours to sell us on her character's transformation and she pulls off Franny's change like a pro," wrote one critic for In The Seats.

Eve Hewson landed a role in another blockbuster with 2018's "Robin Hood," in which she starred as Maid Marian. The cast also featured Taron Egerton as Robin, Jamie Dornan as Will, and Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff of Nottingham. 

Once again, Hewson was thrilled to join the project. "I'm excited because I'm so obsessed with the director Otto Bathurst," she said to Iris Covet Book before she began filming. "He's one of the most interesting directors out there right now. ... It is such a good crew of talent, and I'm so fortunate to be a part of it."

Although the film received mixed reviews, Hewson was widely praised for her work, with Variety commenting on her "romantic presence" and "electrifying radiance," and Irish Central noting that she "has miles more of that x-factor thing that so many Irish actors (including Dornan) have too, call it a certain soulfulness." 

Next up for Eve Hewson was "Tesla," a 2020 film about the legendary inventor Victorian Nikola Tesla, who is largely responsible for modern electricity. Hollywood veteran Ethan Hawke took on the titular role, while Hewson was brought on to play the part of Anne, J.P. Morgan's daughter, a famed women's rights advocate at the time who recognized Tesla's talent early on. As Hewson told WWD, "She was a really ballsy woman from a different time. She met Tesla and saw him and totally believed in his genius, and went to her father and said you need to invest in this guy, and she spearheaded the whole thing." 

The film was an unusual period drama, filled with incongruous modern references and objects, including laptops, phones, and even vacuum cleaners. This strange approach is part of what made the project so appealing to Hewson. "It's definitely a very experimental film. ... It's sort of tongue in cheek," she said. 

Hot on the heels of "Tesla" was Netflix's miniseries "Behind Her Eyes" opposite Tom Bateman and Simona Brown. "I think I did my audition tape in the middle of the night on a Wednesday, and I was cast on Friday and then I was on a plane to London on Monday, the day 'Tesla' wrapped," she told The Irish Times. Hewson also noted that she wasn't familiar with the book the miniseries was based on, so she kind of winged it when it was time to film her self-tape. "The audition tape I made, looking back on it, was so the wrong take on the character because I didn't know the twist," she said.

In "Behind Her Eyes," Hewson played Adele, the mysterious, somewhat ominous wife of psychiatrist David. Not only was the show a huge hit for Netflix, it also gave Hewson her first chance to be a real-life meme after a clip of her chopping vegetables went viral. (The scene was only a little less intense than that clip of Kendall Jenner chopping a cucumber.) "The memes are so funny," she said to Spin. "I've always dreamt of being a meme — it's one of my goals in life."

Eve Hewson starred in BBC's epic New Zealand-set period drama "The Luminaries" in 2020. The show traced the stories of a group of people who set off for New Zealand in the 1860s during the gold rush. 

Although Hewson was no stranger to major TV shows at this point, playing the mysterious Anna Wetherell in "The Luminaries" came with an entirely new level of pressure: she had top billing. "It was my first experience being a lead with the responsibility of carrying a show," Hewson said to Vogue. "The character is so adored and I was desperate to make sure I got it right."

By the sounds of things, she took the responsibility seriously and threw herself into the role, spending as much time rehearsing and going over the material as possible. "I was a total loser on the weekends and didn't do anything except go home and learn my lines," she said.

"Bad Sisters" became something of a cult sensation — and Eve Hewson's character ended up being pretty much everyone's favorite. The show, spearheaded by Sharon Horgan for Apple TV+, follows a group of four Irish sisters who plot to kill their cruel brother-in-law. As Becka Garvey, Hewson was the youngest and most chaotic of the siblings.

As Hewson told The Hollywood Reporter, the show marked something of a turning point in how her work was received by the public. "To be in a show that you're truly, truly, truly proud of, is just the best feeling in the world. We made that show not knowing if anybody was going to watch it and it just spread like wildfire," she said. "And my character is so close to my heart and so close to who I am and so different to the roles I usually go out for." As she explained, Becka was messy and, often, ugly, which was a nice change for the actor — and for people to fall in love with her, she said, was the "most rewarding, happy, warm feeling you can have as an actor."

Eve Hewson continued to push herself out of her comfort zone with "Flora and Son," a musical film about a single mother from Dublin who turns to music to reconnect with her son. After reading the script, Hewson fell in love with the character and became determined to play her — even though it meant singing on camera. "I just thought, 'I could not let this person get away from me. I have to play this part," she Deadline. "And I'm just going to have to get over my fear of singing — it's not something I've ever wanted to do — and just go for it.'"

One might assume that the second-eldest child of a very famous frontman would turn to her dad for pointers, but she was not exactly keen on the idea of going to Bono for singing lessons. "I have to say, I would rather sing in front of the entire world than for my dad," she confessed to The Hollywood Reporter. "It would be terrifying. I mean, he's a really, really good singer."

While Netflix's "The Perfect Couple" is hardly Eve Hewson's first major role, the show may still be one of her biggest projects to date. As previously noted, Hewson is part of an all-star cast that includes Nicole Kidman. However, when she first landed the show, Hewson didn't realize she would be acting opposite the Oscar winner. "My agents were like, 'You got it, so we've just got to figure out dates, you know, Nicole this, Nicole that.'" she recalled on "Today." "I was like, 'Who is Nicole, is she a producer?' ... It was the most beautiful surprise."

Although Hewson loved being part of the project, there was one part of the show she struggled to get on board with: the infamous opening dance number. Turns out, she wasn't the only cast member who was totally thrown for a loop. "It was a surprise attack from the director on the last day," she said on "Today." We didn't understand. We were like, 'What do you mean? We are making a murder-mystery why are we dancing? What is this, a musical?' And she was like 'just do it.'" Thank goodness the cast did it, because it's already completely iconic.

As for what's next? Well, Hewson's career shows no signs of slowing down. As of September 2024, she has four projects in the works. Clearly, Hewson is not one to rest on her nepo baby laurels.