'Bridgerton' actress sends violent message to would-be criminals
'Bridgerton' actress says, 'it became a real matter, in my mind, of life and death'
June 14, 2025
Genevieve Chenneour, the Bridgerton actress, recently got candid about how she fought off a thief who tried to snatch her phone at a busy central London café.
Daily Mail shared a video of the 27-year-old actress, who plays the role of Miss Clara Livingston in Bridgerton, sitting with her dog in a café in West London when a man walked up and tried to take her phone from the counter next to her.
For the unversed, before stepping into the entertainment world, Chenneour was a trained boxer with the Amateur Boxing Association and had been a professional athlete who took part in international artistic swimming events, representing Team GB.
The video, recorded in February, shows her noticing her phone was taken and hitting the thief several times to get it back, revealing the whole incident lasted about five minutes and the man was on the floor most of the time.
Taking to her TikTok account, she said the thief had “messed with the wrong girl” and also spoke about the incident on ITV morning show This Morning.
Chenneour shared, “I had a bit of a sixth sense that something wasn’t quite right, as woman you have that kind of intuition. I don’t know if I would advise anybody else to do it.”
The Phantom of the Open star went on to add, “I think I have very quick reactions, thanks to having three brothers growing up and I’m an aviated carded boxer. I think it just was an instinct, I also do a lot of fight training for work and acting…I thought that was a normal reaction and I read all the comments [online] and realised, actually, a lot of people would just let them take the phone.”
“It kind of went round the corner and it turned into a full-on scrap with two people [Boulares and his accomplice]. And I was threatened with being stabbed so it became a real matter, in my mind, of life and death,” she recalled.
“So, I did things like, I remember kicking him back with my leg to create space in case he had a weapon on him… It was just a life-changing, crazy moment,” Chenneour noted.
