Aisling Loftus
AISLING Loftus has over the years become used to people mispronouncing her Irish name as Ayesling or Ashley but the War And Peace star has a simple remedy – make it as big in the acting world as Saoirse Ronan and then nobody will get it wrong ever again.
Aisling is taking giant steps towards achieving her goal after landing the prestigious role of key character Sonya Rostova in the Tolstoy epic... and Hollywood talent-spotters have been taking notice of her name on the credits. The 25-year-old has a series of meetings lined up in Tinseltown which she hopes may lead to a part in a big American TV series.
Her Irish parents are named Paddy and Eileen and she retains a strong affection for the country.
She takes up the story: ‘I’m proud of my Irish heritage. My dad Paddy is from Dublin and my mum Eileen is from Tipperary. Although I was born and raised in Nottinghamshire, the Irish side of our family was always kept very much alive. It was more than just my dad playing The Dubliners in the car or boiling joints of bacon (although he did a fair amount of that, too!) – it was more the way that, for example, we’d visit Ireland every summer holiday and it would still be referred to as “going home”. And that’s exactly how it felt to us.
‘I love Irish culture and the Irish people. And my extended family is teeming with orators and storytellers which may have affected my decision to become an actor. I feel that being Irish paves the way for people to be warm to me. They kind of like you for being Irish.
‘People outside Ireland rarely know how to pronounce my name. My sister Aoife got lucky when a character with her name appeared in The Vicar of Dibley. There were jokes cracked along the lines of: ‘She’s so greedy with her vowels, isn’t she?!’ And people remember it. I, on the other hand, get Ayesling or Ashley or other mispronunciations.
‘When I was starting out as an actress, I was advised to change my name. But I really didn’t want to. I also think that if you become successful enough, people will learn how it’s pronounced. Look at Saoirse Ronan!’
For all Aisling’s ambition and obvious acting talents she can also be self-effacing, saying about her trip to Hollywood: ‘I’m pretty nervous about it, mostly because it seems so presumptuous to be saying, “I’m good enough for this.” It takes a lot of courage to dare to believe that it could happen.
‘My looks might go against me. And that’s not me hoping you’ll tell me that I look wonderful. Hollywood beauty isn’t everything. It’s not the same as the beauty that you see when you look at your mum and think that she is beautiful.
‘But I’d choose that kind of beauty over the Hollywood variety every time.’
Aisling’s is the kind of beauty, though, that the producers were looking for when they cast her opposite the dishiest man on War And Peace, Count Nikolai Rostov, played by Jack Lowden.
Off-screen she is dating the handsome Jacob Anderson, who plays Grey Worm in the hit TV series Game Of Thrones.
He was, says Aisling, thrilled for her when she was cast as Sonya in Andrew Davies’s six-part BBC adaptation of Tolstoy’s epic novel where she joins a stellar cast which includes Stephen Rea, Lily James, Gillian Anderson, James Norton, Jim Broadbent, Paul Dano and Adrian Edmondson .
She has been learning her craft since the age of nine when she joined the Nottingham Television Workshop. Since then, she’s worked consistently and been fêted as one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow.
Most recently, she was Agnes Towler in the shopping-and-seduction drama Mr Selfridge. Her character began as a working-class sales girl, but navigated her way up the Selfridges empire to become head of displays.
She also married the store’s dashing creative director Henri Leclair, played by Grégory Fitoussi, but they struggled when it emerged that Henri had post-traumatic stress from his involvement in the First World War.
They left in the third series to pursue a life together away from the thrusting world of retail.
‘Agnes and Henri turned out to be such a moving and genuine love story,’ Aisling says.
Aisling remains uncomfortable about being defined by her looks and prefers to talk about her craft playing down her natural beauty. She says she dreads her agent putting her forward for roles in which, she says, ‘the character’s whole arc in the story is, basically, her beauty. No one is ever going to cast me as that girl. But, then again, those aren’t the roles you can really get your teeth into.’
Expect great things, then, from her forthcoming performances, which include the part of Elizabeth Bennet’s neighbour Charlotte Lucas in the kooky Austen-meets-The Walking Dead movie Pride And Prejudice And Zombies (which also stars Lily James) and, of course, from her portrayal of the downtrodden but loyal-to-the-last Sonya in War And Peace.
‘I do want the audience to feel sympathy for her, but not to find her pitiable,’ she says. ‘I see a certain strength and power in her stoicism and that is how I’ve tried to play her.
‘I was overwhelmed when I was cast as Sonya. When I first heard that they were making War And Peace, I thought: ‘‘No way!’’ It just seemed so big and impressive.
‘I had never read War And Peace. I’d thought it would be too old-fashioned and, at more than 1,200 pages, too long. Then, when I got the part, I thought: ‘‘I’m going to have to read it now!’’ As it turned out, I absolutely loved it and I couldn’t believe how modern Tolstoy’s work felt.
‘It’s a historical story about five aristocratic Russian families and the impact that the Napoleonic Wars have on them, but it’s also a tale of love and loss and Tolstoy completely nails the joys and woes and neuroses that human beings are prey to.
‘Tolstoy paints characters so vividly. One moment that sticks in my mind is when Nikolai Rostov – the love of