Why You Don’t Hear From Sophie Turner Much Anymore

It wasn’t too long ago that Sophie Turner seemed primed to take over the world. The actress sprang into the public eye when she was 15, starring as Sansa Stark in the wildly popular HBO series “Game of Thrones.” Over eight seasons of the program, Turner was one of the few cast members who made it from the show’s pilot to its final episode, growing up in the harsh spotlight just as Sansa was growing up in the cruel world of Westeros.

Compared to others in the cast of “Game of Thrones” after the show ended, Turner was ready for a long career once she hung up her cloak as Sansa. The actor landed a starring role in Fox’s Marvel film universe, and had a high-profile relationship with American pop singer Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers. In 2019, the same year that “Game of Thrones” ended, Turner appeared in the band’s music video for “Sucker,” the group’s first No. 1 single after reuniting. Even though Turner appeared poised for even more success, the next few years were quiet ones for the former Winterfell resident. It wasn’t until 2023 that the actor began to make headlines again, which caused former fans of Sansa Stark to wonder: what has Sophie Turner been up to all these years?

Sophie Turner was unfortunately one of many “Game of Thrones” stars who dealt with serious mental health issues during their tenure on the show. However, she had to experience it all during her teens, and didn’t really identify her struggles until she was 17. During a conversation on Dr. Phil’s podcast “Phil in the Blanks,” she said her mental health “only started to go downhill when I started to hit puberty and I was gaining weight. Then there was the social media scrutiny and everything — that was when it kind of hit me.”

On top of that, the show she was gaining notoriety for wasn’t exactly a healthy thing for a teenager to be watching and experiencing. While Turner had fun on the show’s set, that mainly derived from a need to counteract the heavy material that would otherwise weigh on her. Facing criticism for her body or her acting at such a young age was enough to send Turner spiraling in the years to come, as she battled an eating disorder. At one point, she even had to hire a live-in therapist to monitor her unhealthy eating habits, which she credits with helping her reshape her relationship to her own self-image. If only Sansa had access to the same kind of treatment Turner was lucky enough to seek out, things might have looked a lot different for the character.

Just as Sophie Turner struggled with her declining mental health in the public eye, the end of her time as Sansa Stark was also quite difficult for the actor to process. By the time the “Game of Thrones” series finale aired in 2019, she had been playing the role of Sansa for a decade, taking the character from precocious young lady to traumatized captive to hardened leader, all in the span of eight seasons. At the very least, Turner got to relish the character having a fitting ending compared to most others on the show.

Still, letting go of the character she had grown up with wasn’t easy, as she recounted in an Instagram post the day the finale aired. “Thank you for teaching me resilience, bravery and what true strength really is,” she wrote. As for moving on, the actor later credited Joe Jonas for helping her figure out what her life would look like post-“Game of Thrones.” While it must have been a confusing experience to say goodbye to Sansa at the time, she was also adamant about leaving the character in the past, confirming shortly after the finale aired that she didn’t want to reprise the role in the future.

Although the end of “Game of Thrones” was a hard thing to accept, there was a lot for Sophie Turner to look forward to in 2019. Three years earlier, the actor had made her superhero debut in “X-Men: Apocalypse” as a young Jean Grey, the mutant who eventually becomes a villainous traitor to the iconic Marvel team. That opportunity for Turner came with 2019’s “Dark Phoenix,” which adapted the comic book saga of the same name.

Coming hot off her tenure on “Game of Thrones,” the movie seemed like the perfect opportunity to utilize the acting prowess Turner had displayed throughout the HBO series. However, “Dark Phoenix” bombed at the box office, garnering poor reviews across the board as well. On the bright side, some reviews did commend Turner’s performance for holding the film together, though clearly it wasn’t enough to make up for all its flaws.

At the time, it still seemed as if Turner would brush off the “Dark Phoenix” debacle and continue with her movie career, with media analyst Paul Dergarabedian telling Vanity Fair that, despite the film’s financial failure, “That’s a lot of people from many different cultures and countries seeing Sophie Turner beyond the Sansa Stark role, and that’s no small thing … that’s a currency that really is profound in its impact.” However, the biggest twist in Turner’s life was yet to come.

Sophie Turner had her whole career ahead of her as “Game of Thrones” came to an end. Everything changed when she was 24 years old, and discovered that she was pregnant on a trip to Bali. Like most young adults, Turner struggled with the idea of becoming a mother so early on, but told British Vogue, “I really didn’t know if I wanted to be a mother, but something changed in me that day. I just knew I had to have her.”

Turner’s first child with Joe Jonas, Willa, was born in 2020, which ended up being a pretty inconvenient time to give birth. However, the pandemic and lockdown only gave Turner more time to spend with her newborn, who was quickly given a little sister, Delphine, in 2022. The decision to have two children in her early to mid-20s has been nothing but positive for Turner, particularly in terms of her own body image and especially after a long adolescence fielding negative comments about her appearance.

More importantly, having two kids forced Turner to grow up a lot faster, which had its pros and cons. On the one hand, she’s been incredibly busy raising the next generation instead of basking in potential movie stardom like many “Game of Thrones” fans expected of her.

Sophie Turner’s on-screen appearances were few and far between in the past few years as she focused on raising her children. When she did pop up in various projects, though, she reminded audiences what they were missing. One of those was “Do Revenge,” a 2022 Netflix comedy starring Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes as two teens who team up to enact vengeance on those who have wronged them. Turner’s role in the movie may have been small, but it sure was memorable.

In the film, Turner plays Erica, a tennis camper who is framed by Mendes’ character for possession of cocaine, leading to her being dragged out by force. Turner told Empire that she worked on channeling some classic on-screen freakouts: “For most of my career, I’ve been playing someone who has a lot of pent-up feelings,” she said. “I’ve been longing for a scene where one of my characters was able to scream and cry and shout and push people around.”

The scene — particularly Turner’s outraged delivery of “I don’t do cocaine!” — ended up getting a lot of viral attention, especially since the performance was so different from roles like Sansa Stark. Hopefully, in the future there will be a movie like “Do Revenge” to watch that stars Sophie Turner in a role like this.