Caitríona Balfe is an Irish actress, producer, and former model. She is best known for her starring role as Claire Fraser in the Starz historical drama series Outlander (2014–present), for which she received nominations for four Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama.
Balfe was born on 4 October 1979 in Dublin and grew up outside the village of Tydavnet, near Monaghan Town, in a family of seven. She is the fourth of five children. Her father was a retired Garda Sergeant. She went to Dublin Institute of Technology to study drama, before being spotted by a model scout.
At 18, after working as a model in Dublin for a few months, she caught the attention of a visiting Ford Models scout, who offered her the chance to work for them in Paris. Balfe's modelling career highlights include opening and closing fashion shows for Alberta Ferretti, Armani, Burberry, Cacharel, Calvin Klein, Chanel, Dior, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Dries van Noten, Fendi, Givenchy, H&M, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Moschino, Roberto Cavalli, and Valentino. In a three-year period, she walked in more than 250 runway shows. She has also appeared on the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Elle. At the height of her career, Balfe was considered to be among the twenty most in-demand models in the world.
While living in New York, Balfe played the minor role of an employee of the magazine Runway in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada. In 2009, after a decade-long modelling career, Balfe returned to her initial career choice and moved from New York to Los Angeles, spending her first year and a half in the city exclusively taking acting classes, first at the Warner Loughlin Studios and then at the Sanford Meisner Center and the Judith Weston Studios.
Balfe had leading roles in the series The Beauty Inside (2012) and H+: The Digital Series (2012–2013), and appeared in the films Super 8 (2011), Now You See Me (2013), Escape Plan (2013), Money Monster (2016), and Ford v Ferrari (2019). Her performance in Belfast (2021) earned her nominations for the Golden Globe and British Academy Film Awards.
Balfe currently lives in London and, while filming Outlander, in Glasgow.
