Moments of joy

HAVING worked with Hollywood luminaries including Amy Adams, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Meryl Streep, Eliza Scanlen says she is past the starstruck phase, but admits she had a bit of a moment when meeting Gillian Anderson on the set of The First Lady. Scanlen plays a younger version of the Emmy-winner’s Eleanor Roosevelt in the anthology series that traces the lives of prominent US presidents’ wives.

“I was pretty shocked to meet her – and also playing the young Gillian Anderson

I have to live up to the queen,” she says with a laugh. “Or up to

Margaret Thatcher.”

She also says she formed a bond with her Little Women co-stars Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Emma Watson that will far outlast the duration of the shoot. “I loved doing that film and I am mates with all of them,” she says. “But the life of an actor is so strange – you go for years without seeing somebody but you just know you will always be friends … they are the Little Women sisters and it’s sisters forever.”