A baby was not what Lydia Arbello had in mind at twenty-five. As a well renowned stage actress at the West End's Apollo Theatre, her life and schedule were already packed with obligations and the unplanned pregnancy threw a wrench in her plans as well as the 1988 run of Hugh Whitemore's The Best of Friends. Lydia performed until she was too far along to hide it, then the show went on without her while her spirits and her career never recovered from the unfortunate event. She named the little girl Vada Nicole after her two grandmothers and gave up the stage to raise her daughter as a single mother.

   The man who had put Lydia in this position-- a fellow actor by the name of Lewis Thompson, however, made a career from the stage to the camera over the course of the next ten years. On the rare ocassion that he would pop into Vada's life, he would fill her with stories from his experiences and as she got older, invited her along to the set. It was when she was eight that Vada knew she would follow in her parents' footsteps and come hell or high water, she was going to make her mother's sacrifice to her worth it.

   Clearly already experiencing a dramatic perception of life, it was no suprise to anyone that while her schoolmates were asking for things like CDs, video games, books, and computers that Vada was begging her mother to pull her out of regular school to attend a performing arts school. Lydia made her daughter wait until after secondary school, but used that time to save up money and prep Vada for an audition at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). After a very successful summer run on the National tour of LLoyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind as the role of Brat, Vada both started at RADA and landed her first paid film acting role as a bit part with no lines in Mira Nair's Vanity Fair.

   It was from the beginning that Vada ended up stuck in a rut with her film career. The process of auditions, call backs, rejections became a vicious cycle. While she continued to work on stage, she couldn't seem to break into film or television. She was starting to doubt her ability when she landed the small role of Briony Tallis as an adult in the 2007 film, Atonement. That role led her to get pigeon holed in Period dramas for the next two years. She had a small roles both in the BBC's Little Dorrit miniseries and Miss Austen Regrets, a made for TV movie based on the later years of writer, Jane Austen and every role offered from there one was along the same vein. Vada began to resent the fact that being British seemed to mean being stuck in historical or classic literature remakes and she began to look at other prospects. She went back to stage for a year after firing her manager and had all but given up hope on breaking into the industry.

   After RADA, Vada moved to New York with her then boyfriend, a fellow alumni. In the beginning, she was filled with the romantic idea of the two of them making something of themselves on Broadway. After all, they were classically trained and she felt it gave them a step up from a lot of the competition. But ego began to get in the way. Resentment started to build between the couple after one would get a role and the other turned away. It created tension, started fights and it eventually reached a point where Vada was scared to audition because she worried that she would set him off. She began to fail on purpose and eventually began working as a waitress to pay bills, while her boyfriend continued to try and fail at making it in a major Broadway production.

   Unhappy and mentally defeated, Vada eventually reached a point where she knew she had to get out. After breaking up and moving out in 2009, she got herself an American manager who helped her land the role of Danielle in the 2010 movie, Dirty Girl. It was Vada's break through into American film and for her, the subject matter was theraputic and refreshing. She continued to push for more psychologically demanding roles and followed her first up with Kelly + Victor, as the title female lead, a job she was able to snag through her father back home in the UK and then the psychological thriller, Plush, where she had the opportunity to put her vocal training to use. That role landed her the lead in the music heavy movie, God Help the Girl and established not only her vocal range but the depth of her subject ability.

  Finally feeling free from the Historical drama cliche and healed from her emotionally trying past relationship, Vada has begun to really challenge herself. She has a small role in the new Mad Max reboot and will start shooting the thriller flick, The Neon Demon in the spring. Following that, she'll be shooting her first major role as Harley Quinn in DC's Suicide Squad. She currently resides in Manhattan, New York.