DOWNTON ABBEY’S SAUCY LILY JAMES AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE
THIS is Downton Abbey star Lily James as you’ve never seen her before.
The beautiful brunette – best known for playing Lady Rose MacClare in the period drama and to children as the Disney princess Cinderella – strips naked for a series of raunchy scenes in her latest film The Exception.
The 28-year-old actress plays a Jewish Dutch woman Mieke de Jong who falls in love with German SS Captain Stefan Brandt, played by Jai Courtney, as he hunts for a British spy within the home of the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The Second World War romantic thriller, based on Alan Judd’s novel The Kaiser’s Last Kiss, features a sex scene in the kitchen after James strips off in front of Australian heart-throb Courtney.
The movie, due to hit cinema screens in June, was chosen as the closing selection at the Newport Beach Film Festival in California, which drew to a close yesterday.
The festival’s CEO and Founder Gregg Schwenk described James’ performance in the war-time drama as “a true breakout”.
Acclaimed
Judd’s critically acclaimed novel tells the tale of the relationship between the SS officer and a woman who is an undercover British agent in the exiled German Emperor’s household where she is posing as a maid.
When the British spy’s identity emerges, the disillusioned German officer has to choose between his duty to Nazi Germany and the woman he loves.
One scene in a trailer for the film shows Mieke admitting she was Jewish, and Brandt replying: “I don’t care.”
Award-winning stage director David Leveaux, who is making his silver screen debut as a director with The Exception, said Courtney, 31, has the right credentials to portray Brandt.
He said: “To have a credible Brandt, you had to have a man who was believably a combat soldier, somebody who’s instantly alpha male – in other words, he couldn’t be Hamlet from the beginning but more like Macbeth.
“It’s one thing to play a cast-iron hero from beginning to end but it’s quite another to play one who actually becomes authentically vulnerable – at a really inconvenient moment for him.”
Producer Judy Tossell said: “It’s about loyalty, duty and a forgotten pocket of history.
“It’s also a really exciting spy thriller with a love story running through the middle of it.”