If you were watching movies in the early 2000s, you definitely saw Alice Evans. She was everywhere for a minute—playing the lead in massive Disney sequels, popping up in cult-classic sci-fi shows, and even gracing the cover of British tabloids. But honestly, if you look at her IMDb page now, it feels like a bit of a time capsule. It’s a mix of "Oh, I remember that!" and "Wait, she was in that?"
Alice Evans movies and tv shows are a weirdly fascinating journey through late-90s French cinema, Hollywood blockbusters, and the CW's vampire obsession. She didn't just stumble into acting; she was remarkably strategic about it, at least in the beginning. Born in New Jersey but raised in Bristol, she basically decided to skip the standard British drama school route and moved to Paris.
She studied at the Cours Florent, which is essentially the Harvard of French acting schools. That’s a bold move for an English girl. It paid off, though. She landed a lead role in a French sitcom called Elisa Top Modèle and stayed for 18 months. Can you imagine a British actress today just casually becoming a TV star in France first? It’s almost unheard of.
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Most people know her from one specific thing: 102 Dalmatians (2000). She played Chloe Simon, the probation officer who owned the dogs. It was a massive deal. She was sharing the screen with Glenn Close and Gérard Depardieu. But more importantly, it's where she met her future husband, Ioan Gruffudd.
The story is kinda legendary in a bittersweet way. She was actually in an eight-year relationship with Olivier Widmaier Picasso (yep, the grandson of that Picasso) when she started filming. By the time the movie wrapped, her life had flipped. She won the role of Chloe on the same day her mother passed away from a heart attack—she hadn't even had the chance to tell her mom she’d landed the part.
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Why the Disney Fame Didn't Last
After the dalmatians, things didn't exactly skyrocket the way they do for Marvel stars now. She did a few British films like The Abduction Club and Blackball. Honestly? They weren't great. Blackball was a comedy about lawn bowls starring Vince Vaughn. It’s as weird as it sounds.
She eventually moved to Los Angeles in 2003. This is usually the part of the story where an actor either hits the A-list or becomes a "working actor" who shows up in everything for one episode. Alice took the latter route.
The Queen of the Supernatural: Lost and The Vampire Diaries
If you’re a nerd for 2010s TV, you’ve seen her. She has a very specific "vibe"—cold, aristocratic, and slightly terrifying. It makes sense that she’d end up as a villain.
- Lost (2009): She played the younger version of Eloise Hawking. If you remember the time-travel madness of Season 5, she was the one shooting her own son (Daniel Faraday) in the past. It was a brief role, but because of how Lost fans analyze everything, she became an iconic part of the lore.
- The Vampire Diaries & The Originals: This is probably her most recognizable role for younger fans. She played Esther Mikaelson, the Original Witch. She was the mother of all vampires and also the person trying to kill them all. She brought a certain gravitas to a show that was mostly about teenagers pining for each other.
She had this way of delivering lines like her teeth were clenched, which sounds like a critique, but for a thousand-year-old witch who hates her kids? It worked perfectly.
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The French Connection and the Bilingual Edge
A lot of people forget she’s actually bilingual. Some of her best work isn't even in English. In Une pour toutes (1999), directed by Claude Lelouch, she played Macha. It was a critical success in France. She also starred in Ma femme s'appelle Maurice (2002), which is a classic French farce.
It’s interesting because being a "foreign" star in France is hard. Usually, they want you to lose the accent. Alice actually had to loop her dialogue in Italian for the miniseries Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna because her Italian sounded "too British" and they wanted her to sound "French-Italian." It's these kinds of weird industry hurdles that people never see.
What Really Happened with Her Career?
By the mid-2010s, the roles started to dry up. There’s been a lot of public drama regarding her personal life and her divorce from Ioan Gruffudd, which I won't get into because the internet has already done that to death. But professionally, it’s a classic case of the "mom trap" in Hollywood. She stepped back to raise her two daughters, Ella and Elsie, and when she tried to step back in, the industry had changed.
In 2024, she famously noticed her Wikipedia page had been changed to refer to her as a "former" actress. She wasn't happy about it. And why would she be? Most actors never really retire; they just wait for the right script.
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Key Filmography Highlights
- 102 Dalmatians (2000): Chloe Simon. Her Hollywood peak.
- The Christmas Card (2006): Faith Spelman. This is one of those Hallmark-style movies that people watch every single December without fail. It's basically a permanent paycheck.
- Lost (2009): Young Eloise Hawking. A masterclass in being "coldly efficient."
- The Vampire Diaries (2011–2012): Esther Mikaelson. The role that gave her a whole new generation of fans.
- Liars All (2013): A psychological thriller that was one of her last major film roles before the long hiatus.
Is a Comeback Possible?
Acting is a marathon, not a sprint. Look at someone like Jennifer Coolidge—she was "gone" for years before The White Lotus made her the biggest star on the planet. Alice Evans has the range. She can do the posh British aristocrat, the French femme fatale, or the suburban American mom.
The trick is finding a director who sees her as an actress rather than a tabloid headline. If she leans back into the "prestige TV" world—maybe a guest spot on something like The Crown or a gritty British police procedural—she could easily find her footing again.
How to catch up on her work today:
If you want to see her at her best, skip the bowls movie. Go straight to The Vampire Diaries Season 3 or find a copy of The Abduction Club. She’s got a screen presence that a lot of modern "influencer-actors" just don't have. She feels like a real person, even when she's playing a witch who can't die.
For anyone looking to follow her trajectory, the best move is to watch her French films. That’s where you see the real technique. It’s easy to forget that before she was "the girl from the dog movie," she was a serious student of the craft in Paris. That kind of training doesn't just go away.
To get the most out of her filmography, start with the 2006 cult favorite The Christmas Card for something cozy, then jump into the Mikaelson family drama for the high-stakes performance that defined her later career.