and directed the short film Scrubber, casting Amanda Hale, Michelle Duncan, Honor Kneafsey and Steven Robertson. The film was shown at the Edinburgh film festival where it was nominated for Best British Short Film, at Sundance film festival where it was nominated for Best International Short Film, at London Short Film Festival where it won the Underwire Award for Best Female Character, and at Cannes where it screened in the Short Film Corner. The film was released as part of a short film collection, The Joy of Six, a Soda Pictures Release. It was announced on 18 April 2018 that Garai will make her feature directorial debut with Amulet (previously named Outside), a horror film written by Garai and starring Carla Juri, Imelda Staunton and Alec Secareanu. The film went into production in autumn 2018. It was released on VOD in July 2020. Personal life Garai's great-grandfather emigrated from Budapest to New York in the 1910s with his English-born wife, then moved to London, where he founded the Keystone Press Agency. Most of Romola's Jewish relatives were murdered during the Holocaust in Hungary. Garai lives in London. In 2009 she obtained a degree in English literature from the Open University. She guards her private life, saying, "It's too simplistic to say that people start to believe what's written about them. But what happens is that you become a certain way to please people, to be liked, to be what's expected of you, to change yourself so that you become the best possible version of yourself for people who don't know you. And I think that's a terrible, pernicious thing." She adds, "In a way, I'd rather go into an interview and be disliked, and have unpleasant things written about me, than to have a wonderful, glowing article written that is in no way a reflection of who I am." Garai enjoys travelling and cooking, calling it "therapeutic". She has visited Hong Kong, Malaysia, Italy, Austria, Morocco, Switzerland and the United States, "To be the outsider for a period of time changes you for the better. It shakes up your comfort level. You have to really make an effort to enter into other people's culture and psychology and language, which the British are very bad at doing." In March 2013, she gave birth to a daughter, and the following year married her boyfriend, British actor Sam Hoare. They have since had