Morahan made her professional debut at 17, playing the leading role of Una Gwithian in a two-part BBC television adaptation of
The Peacock Spring (1996). Morahan joined the
Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001, making her theatre debut at
Stratford-upon-Avon in
Love in a Wood and her London debut at the
Barbican Theatre (that December) in
Hamlet. Other credits for the company included
Night of the Soul and ''Prisoner's Dilemma''. At the
Tricycle Theatre in March 2004 she played Ruby, a 1960s hippie who becomes a disenchanted 1980s political wife, for the
Oxford Stage Company revival of
Peter Flannery's
Singer. In the same year she first worked with
Katie Mitchell at the
National Theatre when she starred in the title role of
Euripides'
Iphigenia at Aulis. In July 2005, she appeared again at the National in
Nick Dear's
Power, staged in the Cottesloe Theatre and also won acclaim at the
West Yorkshire Playhouse,
Leeds, in September 2005 playing Viola in Ian Brown's production of
Twelfth Night. In 2006, she played the leading role, of Penelope Toop, in
Douglas Hodge's touring revival of
Philip King's hit farce
See How They Run. In the same year, for her Lyttelton Theatre performance as Nina in Katie Mitchell's staging of
Chekhov's
The Seagull, she was awarded second prize in the
Ian Charleson Awards 2007. TV credits include
Bodies and BBC One's
Outnumbered, in which she portrays recurring character Jane. She has appeared in series 1, 2 and 4 of
Outnumbered, as well as the Christmas Specials in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2024. In January 2008, she appeared in the film
The Bank Job, and she played a mounted policewoman in the ITV comedy drama pilot
Bike Squad. Giving a career enhancing performance, she also played
Elinor Dashwood in
BBC One's
three-part adaptation, by
Andrew Davies, of
Jane Austen's novel
Sense and Sensibility, first broadcast on New Year's Day 2008. On 13 June 2008, she won Best Actress at the 14th Shanghai Television Festival for her performance. She worked again with director Katie Mitchell, co-starring with
Benedict Cumberbatch in
The City, a new, darkly comic mystery play by
Martin Crimp, 24 April – 7 June 2008. while later in the year she played Mary in
T.S. Eliot's
The Family Reunion at the
Donmar Warehouse. She returned to the National in April 2009 to play Kay Conway in
Rupert Goold's production of
J. B. Priestley's
Time and the Conways in the Lyttelton auditorium and also Dawn in
Caryl Churchill's
Three More Sleepless Nights in the same season. On 28 February 2010, she appeared as Miss Enid in
Lark Rise to Candleford, and then as Martina Twain in the BBC adaptation of
Martin Amis's
Money. In the theatre, she played Annie in
The Real Thing by
Tom Stoppard at
The Old Vic theatre, directed by Anna Mackmin, from April to June 2010; a year later returning to the stage in
Thea Sharrock's pared-down
Sheffield Crucible revival of
David Hare's 1978
Plenty:
Morahan affords the heady sensation of watching an actress at the top of her game (Sunday Times, Culture, 14 February 2011). From 29 June to 26 July 2012, she played the lead role of
Nora Helmer, opposite
Dominic Rowan's Torvald, in a new version of ''
A Doll's House'' by
Simon Stephens at London's
Young Vic Theatre, in a production directed by
Carrie Cracknell and designed by
Ian MacNeil. Her performance saw her named Best Actress at the 2012
Evening Standard Awards and the 2012
Critics' Circle Theatre Awards / She also received a nomination for an
Olivier Award for her performance. From 8 August to 26 October 2013, Morahan reprised her role as Nora Helmer alongside Dominic Rowan, who returned as her husband Torvald, at the Duke of York's Theatre London. The production then transferred to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY, in 2014. In July 2015, Morahan played the role of doomed mother Elizabeth Aldridge in the BBC's
two-part television adaptation of
Sadie Jones' debut novel
The Outcast.
The Guardians Julia Raeside was impressed with Morahan's portrayal, writing, "She is so perfectly cast, the lack of her is palpable on screen. We miss her too." The following year, Morahan starred in the five-part BBC series
My Mother and Other Strangers. ==Personal life==