Amelia Warner is the only child of British actress Annette Ekblom. Relocating to London when she was 4 years old, she studied at the Royal Masonic School for Girls, and then (at 16) the College of Fine Arts. However, her schools did not approve of her taking so much time off for her acting work and so was forced to study for a while at a college in Belsize Park. She was "discovered" after she and her friends devised and acted out a play in Covent Garden where she was spotted by an agent and won a place at London Royal Court Theatre's Youth program. Warner had a string of television roles in TV dramas such as Casualty before making it big with Lorna Doone and the film Quills, which both came out in Christmas 2000.