SIENNA MILLER’S SECOND ACT
Once a tabloid target, the actress finds a more settled life as a mum – and new respect on screen
The actress reveals how she found her new groove
Sienna Miller knows a thing or two about making headlines. After her breakout roles in the early 2000s, the British actress quickly became a tabloid fixture known more for her romantic life than her work. Now, nearly 20 years later, “I’m a little more boring,” she says with a laugh. And she’s finally getting the kind of attention she can enjoy – rave reviews. “Getting older is relieving,” says Miller, 37. “People are more willing to see you as a talented human being and not just something in a skirt.” Years ago she left the London party scene (and former fiancé Jude Law) behind for a more settled life as a working actress and mum of Marlowe, 6, her daughter with ex-boyfriend Tom Sturridge. Quietly, her career has flourished. She’s now earning acclaim for American Woman, a drama in which she plays a downtrodden mother looking for her missing daughter, and she co-stars in the new series The Loudest Voice. Her role as a mother is the most rewarding of all. “It’s the most loving, intense relationship that I have,” she says of parenting Marlowe. “She’s heaven, my kid.”
Born in New York to an American banker father and South African model mother, Miller grew up in London. At age 8, she was sent off to a posh English boarding school, and she later studied acting at the famed Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in New York. After appearing in several films and TV shows, Miller booked a role in 2004’s Alfie remake opposite Jude Law. She fell in love with the movie
heartthrob, and they embarked on an eightyear on-and-off romance, derailed for a time by a scandal in 2005 when he cheated on her with his children’s nanny. For Miller, that era, in which she was hounded by paparazzi (and won a lawsuit against the News of the World for hacking her phone), “felt like a nightmare. I was victimised to sell newspapers”.
As she moved on to a lower-profile relationship with British actor Sturridge (they split in 2015), the tabloid spotlight swung away. “That part of it has died
down,” she says, “and has cleared the space for me to do what I always wanted to do, which was act.”
Although she has impressed critics before – playing Andy Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick in 2006’s Factory Girl and military hero Chris Kyle’s wife in 2014’s American Sniper
– Miller is thrilled with the reception for American Woman. “It’s such a labour of love,” she says. “It’s about family and resilience.”
In The Loudest Voice, she plays Beth, the wife of disgraced Fox News exec Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe). “It’s a fascinating world to delve into,” she says. Next up she’ll star with Chadwick Boseman in the drama 21 Bridges. “I’m really enjoying the range,” she says of the complex characters. “I’m playing very different people, and I feel very fortunate to be trusted to do that.”
She spends her downtime “cooking and gardening” with her daughter in New York, where she moved in 2016. “I love New York because it’ll have anyone,” she says. “It’s an open-door policy and that suits me well.” Marlowe, she says, already loves to perform. “She can be whatever she wants to be – but I think she’s an actor, I’m reluctant to say.”
“People don’t think of me as funny ... but I think I’m really funny”