She's being referred to by some newspapers as the future Mrs Benedict Cumberbatch but Sophie Hunter is a dramatic name in her own right.
Miss S.I. Hunter, as she was referred to in The Times engagement announcement, might
not be as famous as the Sherlock actor but she has a pretty impressive CV.
not be as famous as the Sherlock actor but she has a pretty impressive CV.
Her face may be familiar to you from the 2004 film Vanity Fair, where she played Maria Osborne.
She also starred opposite John Barrowman and Peter Capaldi in Torchwood as well as in Midsomer Murders. The image above pictures Hunter in the 2005 TV film Friends and Crocodiles, with Damian Lewis.
Cumberbatch starred alongside Sophie in the 2009 film Burlesque Fairytales. At that point he was dating The Thick of It actress Olivia Poulet, who he had been in a relationship for 10 years. The couple broke up in 2010.
Hunter has also founded her own theatre company. She can speak (and sing) in fluent French, and has received awards for directing.
Her play, The Terrific Electric, which explores how humans interact with electricity, won her The Samuel Beckett Award in 2007.
She received £35,000 to stage her work and co-directed it.
Not everyone was impressed though: the Guardian awarded it only two stars.
More recently she directed 69° S. (The Shackleton Project), which told the story of Ernest Shackleton, an explorer who went on an expedition to the antarctic more than a century ago. The story is dramatised using six three-foot-tall puppets.Her imaginative staging of other plays has won her praise from other critics.
The Boston Globe review praised its "sheer power to haunt the imagination, to capture the sense of isolation felt by that small band of men when they were trapped on the bottom of the world with no guarantee they would make it out alive."
Last year she co-founded production company Lacuna in association with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, with the hope of using theatre productions to help people better understand disability.
Hunter has also produced several operas.
While Cumberbatch studied drama at the University of Manchester, Hunter read modern languages at Oxford.
Her profile on acting website Spotlight says she is also highly skilled at folk singing, piano and horse riding.
With their busy schedules, it seems Ms Hunter and Mr Cumberbatch are going to need a good wedding planner.