Emily Beecham poses with the award. Regis Duvignau/Reuters

Britain's Emily Beecham has been catapulted into the movie big time by winning best actress at the Cannes film festival for playing an enigmatic scientist in "Little Joe".

Beecham, who has spent most of her career in supporting roles, was a surprise choice for the award for her performance as a botanist working on a flower that gives off a scent so ambrosial it makes people euphoric just to sniff it.

Indeed she admitted that she was so shocked that "I forgot to pack my toothbrush" when she received a call, after she'd left Cannes, telling her to come back and pick up the prize.

But while Beecham's rise has hardly been meteoric, the 35-year-old has been marked out as a talent to watch for a decade, winning best actress awards at both the Edinburgh and London Independent film festivals for one of her first films, "The Calling", in 2009.

Emily Beecham, Best Actress award winner, poses with the award. Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters

Her big break came two years ago playing what Variety called "one of the more unpleasant characters in recent memory", a misanthropic young woman who witnesses a stabbing in Peter Mackie Burns' arthouse gem, "Daphne".

That helped consolidate the reputation the Manchester-born actress had won for a stream of British television roles including in the award-winning series "The Unforgiven", and the even more acclaimed "The Village", where she played opposite Maxine Peake and John Simm in the gritty historical rural drama.

Doors really began to open up for her in the United States, her mother's homeland, after she landed a small part in the Coen brothers 2016 sword and sandals send-up, "Hail, Caesar!"

By then she had landed the role of The Widow in the US martial arts action series, "Into the Badland".

Although her father is a pilot, she caught the acting bug at her school, the elite Hurtwood House in Surrey, which bills itself as "the most exciting school in England".

Agence France-Presse