The Sense and Sensitivity of Hannah Ware

Let her fellow Brits carry that stiff upper lip — Hannah Ware of ABC drama Betrayal has no such need to conceal her emotions.

John Griffiths

Listen to Hannah Ware riff on Sara Hayward, the unfaithfully married photographer she plays in ABC’s new drama, Betrayal:

“I identify with her sense of feeling slightly lost. There are people who go about life content because they don’t overthink things. I’m in the other school. I’m incredibly sensitive. Oh, it’s awful to call myself sensitive. Maybe overly sensitive.”

It’s a trait she attributes to her father, John, a noted investigative journalist for the BBC. “He will not rest until he finds some sort of truth, and I do that on an emotional level.”

Though she began modeling at age twelve and her supportive social-worker mom thought she’d also be a “brilliant” actress, she was initially too shy to try. “I auditioned for a school play by reciting a cat poem. I forgot the lines, and that was it for me.”

So, at University College London she studied art history, emphasizing architecture. On a visit to New York, however, she took a friend’s dare. “He said, ‘You’re so dramatic — you need to go to an acting class.’ I found it so liberating.”

Her studies at the Lee Strasberg Institute led her to a manager and the part of Kelsey Grammer’s drug-addicted daughter in the Starz political drama, Boss. “I was very lucky. I would’ve been a terrible architect.”

In a show of modesty unusual for Hollywood, she also pooh-poohs a couple of her show-biz credits. Her part in Cop Out, a 2010 police comedy starring Bruce Willis, is “essentially a glorified modeling role.”

And for the record, she doesn’t really appear in 2011’s acclaimed sex-addict drama, Shame. “My bottom is in Shame. I’m really embarrassed about that.”

She’s much more pleased with Oldboy, the Spike Lee film due out in November. She plays Josh Brolin’s ex-wife, a role she quickly calls “small.”

Now living in L.A., this emotional truth-seeker enjoys the downtown art scene, hitting scruffy-hip boites like Hollywood’s La Poubelle and catching her younger sister, Jessie, a rising indie rocker, when she plays Coachella.

At home, she channels her inner I.M. Pei as a DIY expert. She’s knocked out the ceiling of her place in Koreatown but is mulling a move to Venice. “I think it’s silly to be a British girl in L.A. and not be near the ocean.”