Her first major role upon leaving RADA was as Medea in
Neil LaBute's
Bash: Latter-Day Plays at the Union Theatre in London. She then went on to play Perdita in ''
The Winter's Tale and Cressida in Troilus and Cressida'' at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. She portrayed British writer Mary Sidney in
I Am Shakespeare, written by her step-father
Mark Rylance and directed by Matthew Warchus at the
Chichester Festival Theatre and its UK tour. That same year, along with two of her contemporaries,
David Sturzaker and director Tamara Harvey, she started her own production company, Theater of Memory. She subsequently starred in the Theater of Memory's productions of
Romeo and Juliet and
Bash: Latter-Day Plays, portraying
Juliet and Medea respectively. In 2009, Rylance played
Desdemona in New York City, in
Othello, for which she was nominated for a
Lucille Lortel Award. She next appeared in the
Sam Mendes-directed Bridge Project, a joint venture between the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in
Brooklyn and
The Old Vic in London. She appeared as
Rosalind and
Miranda, respectively, with her husband appearing alongside her as Orlando and
Ariel. In 2012, Rylance co-starred in the horror film
Sinister. In 2013 she appeared in and produced the film
Days and Nights, based on the Anton Chekov play
The Seagull, and written and directed by her husband. ==Personal life==