Names and faces
Indian actress Freida Pinto is loyal to Dior, a company that took a chance on her before she was famous. During a beachside party hosted by the French fashion house Wednesday, Pinto recalled how Dior was one of the first brands to dress her while promoting her Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. She was relatively unknown in Hollywood and had been turned down by other designers. “[They were] accepting and welcoming. You just feel a sense of gratitude,” said the star of Showtime’s Guerrilla. Pinto was joined by fellow fashionistas Jaime King, in a belted, wide-sleeved gown, and Kiernan Shipka of Mad Men. Shipka said she was channeling one of her new favorite shows, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with her velvet cloak dress. “What Maria Grazia Chiuri is doing is just insane,” said Shipka of Dior’s creative director. “It has this backbone of just championing women and just really honoring them and creating beautiful stuff.” The relaxed, sunset soiree was held on the eve of Dior’s cruise collection show, presenting in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas. “What I always expect from Dior is something that will be elegant, modern, chic, useful, timeless, pushing the bar forward,” said King of Thursday’s runway show. “It’s great that people are now bringing high fashion, important fashion and these important designers to our city.”
Charlie Hunnam said he persuaded director Guy Ritchie to cast him as King Arthur after the two bonded over marijuana — talking about it, not indulging. “I heard Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur’ and I thought, ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ and I just sort of saw it right away and wanted to be a part of it,” said Hunnam while promoting the film Wednesday. “And so, we presented that to Guy, my agent, and he just really wasn’t interested. And I said, ‘That is just unacceptable, my friend.’” So Hunnam booked a trip to London on a week off from filming Sons of Anarchy and landed a meeting with Ritchie. He had a standard pitch ready to go but quickly learned that Ritchie didn’t want to even talk about the movie. “He actually creatively was interested in the medical-marijuana business in California of which I knew a little bit about. So we ended up bizarrely talking about medical marijuana for two hours. But, what I realized in hindsight was, he just wanted to get to know me as a chap. He didn’t really care about what my theories about Arthur was or what my opinions of the script were because he already knew what he wanted to do. What he wanted to see was what I was about and whether we saw life in the same way.” King Arthur: Legend of the Sword opens in the United States today and in the United Kingdom on May 19.