Rebecca Van Cleave Biography: Game of Thrones Body Double, Star Wars Puppetry and Music Career

For three days on a closed set in Dubrovnik, Rebecca Van Cleave walked naked through a crowd of extras throwing rotten food and jeers, playing a scene that would air around the world without her name attached to it.

She was the body double for Lena Headey during Cersei Lannister’s “walk of atonement” in the 2015 Game of Thrones season finale “Mother’s Mercy,” a role that was kept quiet until British tabloids identified her days after the episode aired.

That single scene has followed Van Cleave through a career that also includes creature-and-droid puppeteering on three Star Wars films, supporting roles in British television, production work on independent shorts, and an ongoing project as one half of the indie-folk duo The Greatest Endangered Thing.

Van Cleave is a British-American actress, producer and singer-songwriter. According to her IMDb profile, she was born in Barnes, London, and, as she and her collaborators have described in interviews, spent much of her childhood in Virginia before moving back to England in 2012 to pursue acting.

Profile

The Walk of Atonement: Becoming Cersei’s Body Double

Van Cleave’s most widely reported credit came from a role she was not permitted to discuss until it had already become public.

HBO cast her as the nude body double for Lena Headey in Cersei Lannister’s walk through King’s Landing at the end of Game of Thrones’ fifth season, a scene combining Headey’s face with Van Cleave’s body through visual effects.

Headey has explained in press interviews that she chose to use a double for the scene despite having done nudity in other work, saying the intensity the role demanded made her want to protect her emotional performance.

Some viewers criticized the choice after UK press identified Van Cleave as the double later that week, arguing it undercut Headey’s performance; Headey has said the reaction to that criticism surprised her.

Van Cleave has described the three-day shoot, which involved hundreds of extras and crew in Dubrovnik, Croatia, as “one of the scariest, most wonderful, most gratifying experiences I could have imagined.” She has said Headey coached her through the walk itself, and has pushed back publicly on the idea that using a double diminished the scene, crediting Headey’s performance for carrying its emotional weight.

The episode’s director, David Nutter, has said in press interviews that finding the right double was one of the most important casting decisions on the finale.

Screen and Production Career

Before the Game of Thrones role brought her wider attention, Van Cleave had already been building a career in British television and independent film. She played Kirsten in the TV series 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover between 2014 and 2016, and Lily in the E! series The Royals in 2015, credited in that role as Becca Van Cleave.

In the same period she starred as Mel in James Webber’s horror short The Prey, distributed through Blumhouse’s Crypt TV, and also took a lead role in the short film Tiny Little Rocks.

Her connection to the Star Wars franchise grew out of creature work rather than acting alone. She has said in an interview with the Exit 6 Film Festival that she joined the “CFX” creature and droid puppeteering crew on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), brought in later in the shoot for a short stint; she also appeared briefly on screen in a deleted Canto Bight casino scene from that film.

She went on to work on Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as a background alien performer, and returned for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), both as a puppeteer and in an on-screen role as one of the Kessurian dancers.

Van Cleave has also worked behind the camera. After starring in The Prey, she became a producer with its makers’ collective, the Springhead Film Company, going on to produce the short films Hushy Bye (2017) and Mother of the Year (2022).

Her other on-screen credits include a role in My Name Is Lenny (2017) and appearances in the 2020 films Sorority and Bird Lady.

Music with The Greatest Endangered Thing

Van Cleave has run a parallel career as a singer-songwriter. Not long after the Game of Thrones finale aired, she released a debut solo EP, The Bedroom Sessions, written on a baritone ukulele and produced with Sheffield songwriter Ed Cosens and musician John Redgrave.

It was through that project that she met Sheffield-born musician Samuel James Taylor, with whom she began writing under the name Ophelia before settling on The Greatest Endangered Thing.

According to a feature in Americana UK, Van Cleave and Taylor first performed as solo artists before meeting in 2016 and later relocating to rural England, where they wrote music drawing on English and Americana influences and, in their own description, took the duo’s name from a line in a Nikita Gill poem.

Their debut EP as The Greatest Endangered Thing, And You, And Me, was released in 2021, and the duo’s music has continued to receive coverage from outlets that cover folk and Americana music.

Selected Filmography

Career Timeline

Awards and Nominations

• 2015 — Best Actress — Cornwall Horror Fest — Nominee (for The Prey)

The Prey itself won Best Film and an audience vote at Cornwall Horror Fest 2015, and Best Film at the London Rolling Film Festival’s fifth edition, according to the Springhead Film Company’s own project page, though those wins were credited to the film and its director rather than to Van Cleave individually.

Personal Life

Van Cleave’s music career is built around her creative partnership with Samuel James Taylor, with whom she has performed as The Greatest Endangered Thing since around 2016.

Public reporting on the relationship describes it in the context of their shared musical project rather than detailing her private life beyond it.

She maintains a public Instagram account under the handle @rebeccajoean, where she describes herself as an actor and artist and “half of” The Greatest Endangered Thing.

Sources

• IMDb — Rebecca Van Cleave Biography
• IMDb — Rebecca Van Cleave Profile and Credits
• TIME — Game of Thrones Body Double for Lena Headey Talks Walk of Shame
• Fox News — Meet the Actress Who Played Lena Headey’s Body Double on Game of Thrones
• Wikipedia — Mother’s Mercy
• Wookieepedia — Rebecca Van Cleave
• Exit 6 Film Festival — Rebecca Van Cleave on Star Wars, Game of Thrones and Not Reading the Comments Section
• Americana UK — More People Really Should Know About: The Greatest Endangered Thing
• Bandcamp — The Bedroom Sessions
• Springhead Film Company — The Prey
• Rotten Tomatoes — Rebecca Van Cleave Movies and TV Shows
• Instagram — @rebeccajoean

Zeez

Zeez is the editor and founder of BioOrbit, where he researches and writes biographies of public figures from Nigeria and around the world. With 5 years of experience writing about news, entertainment, sports and politics, Zeez focuses on verified facts, clear sourcing and regular updates. Found an error? Report a correction.