Starting from the age of nine, Cobham-Hervey trained and performed in the Adelaide-based youth circus performance troupe Cirkidz for seven years, and was involved in five major productions. When Cobham-Hervey performed in the circus, her specialities were hula hoop, trapeze and acrobatic pitching, but the emphasis was theatrical, and the focus was on storytelling. She attended Marryatville High School. In 2009, Cobham-Hervey became a founding member of an Adelaide circus group called 'Gravity and Other Myths' where she co-devised a show called Freefall, which won the Adelaide Fringe's ‘Best Circus’ award in 2010, the festival's Tour Ready award in 2011 and later that year won ‘Best Circus’ in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and she won the festival's award for ‘Best Emerging Circus/Physical Theatre Performer’ in 2011. Cobham-Hervey also performed with ‘Force Majeure’ in The Age I’m In, a show which was part of the 2008 Sydney and Adelaide festivals, and toured to 17 regional cities in Australia, and toured in Ireland, Canada and Korea.
Career
Cobham-Hervey played the lead role of Billie in Closer Productions' feature film52 Tuesdays from August 2011 to August 2012. After 52 Tuesdays was released at the Sundance Film Festival, Cobham-Hervey was signed by Creative Artists Agency, a major talent agency in the United States, and by United Management in Australia. In 2012, Cobham-Hervey played the supporting role in Projector Films' feature One Eyed Girl. In 2013 she created and performed the front-of-house entertainment at the Adelaide Festival club, Barrio, and in 2014, starred in the "Find Wonderful" television commercial for the re-launch of the Myer brand, filmed in New Zealand over three days. In 2016, Cobham-Hervey appeared in her first play as Rosie Price in Things I Know To be True, which was written by Andrew Bovell for a co-production between State Theatre Company of South Australia and UK's Frantic Assembly. Cobham-Hervey played the role of Kitty in the six-part TV seriesFucking Adelaide, which premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2017 and screened on ABC national television as well as iview from 2018. Cobham-Hervey's directorial debut, a short film commissioned by the ABC and Screen Australia as part of the ABC ME Girls Initiative, premiered simultaneously at the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival and on ABC ME on October 11 2017, the UN's International Day of the Girl. Made by Sophie Hyde's Closer Productions in Adelaide, A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl was awarded the prestigious Crystal Bear for Best Short Film by the Youth Jury of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival’s Generation KPlus Section in February 2018. It is available on ABC iview until June 2019. She played the role of Nanny Sally in the major film Hotel Mumbai, released in 2019. In December 2017, she was cast as Helen Reddy in Australian film-maker Unjoo Moon's bio-pic about the Australian singer Helen Reddy, I Am Woman. Filmed in Australia, Los Angeles and New York in late 2018, the film was in pre-production stages in May 2019.
Filmography
Film
Television
Writing and directing
Theatre
Awards and nominations
Circus and physical theatre
Film and television
Stage (theatre)
Personal life
Cobham-Hervey's father is set and lighting designer and event director Geoff Cobham, and her mother is dance teacher and former dancer Roz Hervey. In March 2017, Cobham-Hervey's relationship with British actorDev Patel became public. They met nine months earlier on the set of Hotel Mumbai.
