When Shalom Brune-Franklin joined the cast of the 2020 Netflix original series Cursed, alongside Katherine Langford, we said she was a relative newcomer. At the time, we meant that she'd had her fair share of acting gigs but hadn't yet become a household name. Fast forward to 2021, and that's all changing.
We won't say Shalom is about to be all over your TV screen, because the truth is, she already is. Prior to playing Sister Igraine on Cursed, Shalom appeared on the BBC One series Our Girl, and now, she's landed a major role on the sixth season of the BBC's biggest series, Line of Duty.
In Line of Duty, she joins the cast as Detective Constable Chloe Bishop, and while we're not sure if her character will stick around for longer than one season (that might depend on whether the show is officially picked up for a seventh season), we certainly hope she does.
Keep reading to get to know Shalom a little bit better before the hit show returns to the BBC on 21 March.
1She Was Born in England but Was Raised in Australia
Shalom is best known as an Australian actress, but she was actually born north of London, in St Albans, to a Mauritian mother and Thai-born English father. When she was 14 years old, her family relocated to Mullaloo, a coastal town in Western Australia. Funnily enough, two of her fellow Cursed costars (Katherine Langford and Devon Terrell) both grew up in Western Australia, too, although the show was filmed near London.
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2Shalom Trained at One of Australia's Best Performing-Arts Universities
When Shalom finished high school, she attended one of Australia's best universities for performers, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), which has seen some of Australia's most successful actors, singers, and dancers walk through its doors.
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3Shalom Had Her Pick of Agents When She Graduated From WAAPA
Image Source: BBC Pictures
While many actors have a significant period of time between graduating from college to landing their first acting role, that was not the case for Shalom. Apparently, she had her pick of agents and in the end decided on Mark Morrissey, who manages fellow Australian exports Chris and Liam Hemsworth. It all makes sense.
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4She Received a Scholarship From a Very Famous Aussie Actor
While studying at WAAPA, Shalom won the inaugural Chris Edmund Performing Arts Scholarship, which was set up by a fellow graduate whom you may have heard of: Hugh Jackman. She was also a finalist for The Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2017, which is an award that was created by Australians in Film in memory of Heath Ledger following his death.
According to Perth Now, acting wasn't Shalom's first choice of career. As a 14-year-old (shortly before moving to Australia), she was a "sports fanatic being trained by her PE coach for a genuine shot as a specialist 800m runner at the 2012 London Olympics".
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6Line of Duty Isn't the First Time Shalom's Appeared on the BBC
Image Source: BBC Pictures
By landing her role on Line of Duty, Shalom is becoming a BBC mainstay. In 2017 and 2018, she played Maisie Richards (a newly recruited army private and skilled driver) on the long-running war drama Our Girl.
More recently, she appeared on the BBC miniseries Roadkill, where she stepped into the shoes of Rose Dietl, the daughter of a politician, Peter Laurence (played by Hugh Laurie), who's in jail for attempting to steal £1 million from the bank where she worked.
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7She Had a Small Role in a Marvel Movie
Image Source: BBC Pictures
It isn't just the agent that Shalom has in common with Chris Hemsworth. She also joined the MCU in 2017, with a supersmall role in the film Thor: Ragnarok, where she played "College Girl #1".
