There can be few more effective vehicles than a continuing role in a global success like Netflix’s Bridgerton for any young actor hoping to make a mark on the profession.

After four years of period drama, however, Florence Hunt is taking on a more contemporary challenge in her debut film Queen At Sea — a prestige project from UK-France production outfit The Bureau that sees her share the screen with Juliette Binoche. Add that to her high-profile casting in the UK-Ireland-Australia adaptation of Jane Sanderson’s novel Mix Tape, and it is clear Hunt is on her way.

An encouraging head teacher helped inspire a love of theatre that led Hunt to an “incredible” eight years with Nottingham’s Television Workshop. Her first job — an advert for Lloyds Bank — confirmed she was on the right path. “The moment I stepped on set, I knew there was nothing I wanted to do more,” she says. “I then did another advert” — for Apple’s iPhone 7 — “where I learned pages of Romeo And Juliet at the age of eight.”

Playing a younger version of heroine Nimue in two episodes of Netflix fantasy series Cursed was another formative experience, and Hunt garnered warm praise for her performance in Michael Longhurst’s Force Majeure at London’s Donmar Warehouse. Yet her big break came when she was cast as Hyacinth, the precocious youngest sibling of the Bridgerton family, in the Shondaland adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Regency-era romance novels. “Actors don’t get many opportunities to take on a role for a long amount of time, so I’m lucky to have grown up as Hyacinth as I’ve grown up as well,” says Hunt.

Mix Tape is set between Sheffield in 1989 and the present day, where two former sweethearts, now at opposite sides of the world, relive their romance through music. Queen At Sea will see 17-year-old Hunt play Binoche’s daughter in a story that finds them moving to London to care for a grandmother as she slips into dementia.

“There is a parallel between her coming-of-age and her grandmother’s end of life,” says Hunt of Lance Hammer’s drama, in which Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall also appear. That some of the scenes were improvised introduced an extra element of jeopardy.

“I enjoyed the responsibility,” insists Hunt. “I like that intensity and being kept under pressure.”

Contact: Sue Latimer, ARG/Avalon US 

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