Alexis Zegerman is an actress and dramatist who was born in London in 1977. She grew up in a Jewish family and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. As an actress Zegerman is best known for her role as Zoe in Mike Leigh’s Oscar-nominated comedy-drama film Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), for which she won a British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress and a London Film Critics Award. She also played the part of Daliah Sofer in Leigh’s Storm (2009) and in his stage play Two Thousand Years  (2005) at the National Theatre.

Zegerman’s writing career began under the auspices of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme. She has written plays for BBC Radio 4 and the play Déja Vu, co-produced by the BBC and ARTE, which was simultaneously broadcast in both countries in February 2009. Zegerman became Pearson Writer-in-Residence at Hampstead Theatre in 2007, where her play Lucky Seven premiered in November 2008. Killing Brando opened at the Young Vic as part of Paines Plough’s Wild Lunch in 2004. Short plays include I Ran the World for the Royal Court and Noise at Soho Theatre (Westminster Prize for New Playwriting 2003). She was a finalist for the 2011-2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play The Steingolds (National Theatre Studio, 2011). Her play Holy Sh!t opened the Kiln Theatre (formerly the Tricycle Theatre) in 2018. It focuses on two middle-class couples, the secular Jews, Simone and Sam, and their Anglican best friends, Nick and Juliet. Having recently left the Labour Party over its antisemitism debates, Zegerman stated: “I am British and I am Jewish. And I don’t think they are mutually exclusive things and I hope that remains the same. Always.” (Jewish Chronicle). Zegerman’s newest play, The Fever Syndrome, was shown by the Hampstead Theatre in 2022 and was directed by Roxana Silbert.

Plays

—. Lucky Seven. London: Nick Hern Books, 2008.

—. Holy Sh!t. London: Nick Hern Books, 2018.