West Sussex actress Sophie Cookson has landed a role in another major movie

She appears on the big screen in this month’s Hollywood big hitter The Huntsman: Winter’s War alongside Chris Hemsworth, Oscar winner Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain.

Sophie, who grew up in West Sussex, plays a character called Pippa in the movie, which is a prequel to the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, starring Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth.

Marking the directorial debut of Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, The Huntsman: Winter’s War expands the fantastical world of the 2012 movie to reveal how the fates of the huntsman Eric and Queen Ravenna are deeply and dangerously intertwined. Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron return to their roles as Eric and Queen Ravenna, with Emily Blunt playing Ravenna’s sister Freya.

The storyline follows the early story of the two sisters, beginning with the evil Ravenna watching silently as Freya suffered a heartbreaking betrayal and flees their kingdom. The plot follows the young ice queen as she spends decades in a remote wintry palace raising a legion of deadly huntsmen – including Eric and warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain) – only to find that her prized two defy her one demand: harden your heart to love. Now the wicked sisters threaten the enchanted land with the darkest force it’s ever seen.

As well as Emily Blunt and Sophie Cookson, the cast also features a number of other British stars including Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith, Sam Claflin, Colin Morgan, Alexandra Roach and Sam Hazeldine.

Sophie, 25, described how she won the role of secret agent candidate Roxy Morton in Matthew Vaughn’s spy spoof Kingsman, which starred Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Samuel L Jackson and newcomer Taron Egerton, in an interview with online magazine Female First. “I just got an email from my agent whilst I was filming something in Ireland, saying ‘Can you put yourself on tape with this? Colin Firth’s attached’. And I was like ‘Oh, it’s one of them’, you know.

“I’ll slightly ignore that one because that’s obviously ridiculous that I would be working with him. But, you know, I did, I put myself on tape and then didn’t hear anything for a while and then got a call saying, ‘They want to get you in, you’re going to meet the casting director’.

“So I still didn’t take it that seriously because as soon as you pin your hopes on something then you’re going to be disappointed, because you know, it’s a hell of a role to get.

“So I went in and met the casting director and again didn’t hear anything for a while... then I got a call saying that Matthew would like to see me so went and met Matthew at the Euston Studios, where we filmed.”

Growing up in West Sussex, Sophie told online magazine InStyle, she had wanted to be a vet, an illustrator or a translator, and doesn’t know where her acting talent comes from.

“Well, my grandmother would have said it all comes from her because she once played Jane Eyre in a school play,” Sophie said. “But otherwise my mum’s an English teacher and my dad is in finance. I have a little brother who is very musical so there is a creative streak.”

She had her first taste of acting at the age of 10 when she joined the National Youth Music Theatre, and after moving to Suffolk, won a place at the Oxford School of Drama.

She left in 2013, and that year went on to play Grace Mohune in Sky drama Moonfleet alongside Ray Winstone and Aneurin Barnard. The following year, she portrayed the character Millie Lancaster in the 2014 TV film Unknown Heart and then in 2015 won the part of Roxy in Kingsman.

This year, as well as The Huntsman: Winter’s War, she has been cast in the adaptation of E M Blomqvist’s novel Hush and also has the lead role in the horror movie The Crucifixion, written by Chad and Carey Hayes, who penned The Conjuring and House of Wax. In The Crucifixion, Sophie plays an investigative journalist who looks into the case of a priest who is jailed for the murder of a nun on whom he was performing an exorcism. She tries to discover whether he murdered a mentally ill person and if he lost the battle with a demonic presence.

With a series of movies coming out in 2016, how does she foresee her future? “There’s no defined career path that I want to take,” she told Female First. “I think all you can do as an actor and as a person in life is take what comes your way and just work it out as you go along, because I think as soon as you have a game plan you’re stuffed!

“Know what you want and know what your ambitions are but I’d never put anything down in confirmed ink - always write in pencil!”