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Cressida Bonas

English actress, dancer and model

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ18221414
Source-derived summary

Cressida Curzon Bonas (born 18 February 1989) is an English actress and model.

Early life and education

Bonas was born in Winchester, Hampshire, the only child of 1960s "it girl" Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon (daughter of the 6th Earl Howe's second marriage) and her third husband, Old Harrovian entrepreneur Jeffrey Bonas. The Bonas family, once grocers and butchers, also owned textile mills in Castle Gresley and Burton-on-Trent; they constructed looms for their own use, and subsequently manufactured them for sale to other companies. The "Bonas Brothers" company closed operations in the 1980s, having produced, as its final line, elastic for women's tights.

She has seven half-siblings: three paternal half-brothers from her father's first marriage; one maternal half-sister from her mother's first marriage; and two maternal half-sisters and a maternal half-brother from her mother's second marriage, including actress Isabella Calthorpe.

Bonas studied ballet from the age of nine at the Royal Ballet School. Later, Bonas won a sports scholarship to Prior Park College in Bath, Somerset, then completed her formal education at Stowe School. She went on to study dance at the University of Leeds, graduating with a 2:1, before undertaking postgraduate dance studies at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in Greenwich.

Career

Whilst at school, Bonas played Cockney housekeeper Mrs. Swabb in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus, Miss Julie in the eponymous play, and Laura in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cressida Bonas” is english actress, dancer and model. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cressida, Bonas and English, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1989-02-18, 1989-01-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Cressida, Bonas and English is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english actress, dancer and model” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18221414. VIAF identifies the subject as 4619149619414504010004. The Library of Congress control number is no2017063094. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cressida Bonas”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cressida Bonas primary sources, Cressida Bonas archive and Cressida research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cressida Bonas”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cressida Bonas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.