Lily’s look of love for West
Four years before THOSE intimate photos rocked actor’s marriage...
THE pictures of Dominic West and Lily James’s intimate al-fresco lunch in Rome caused a stir – and left his ten-year marriage hanging in the balance.
Now more photos have turned up that the actor’s Irish wife may find equally difficult to digest.
The Mail has uncovered a magazine spread from four years ago which shows t he pair savouring an uproarious long lunch.
Dressed to the nines, they drink champagne, devour oysters and joke around with the silverware, and then West serenades Ms James as she poses languidly on top of a grand piano.
Last month West, 51, and Ms James, 31, travelled to the Italian capital for a rumoured two-night stay in a suite at the Hotel De La Ville.
As well as meeting their mutual acting agent, they were spotted sharing a scooter ride and in a clinch over lunch.
After they returned to the UK, West’s wife Catherine FitzGerald insisted ‘we’re very much still together’, and the couple shared a kiss for the world’s media outside their home in Chippenham, Wiltshire.
But reports have since emerged that the marriage is ‘as good as over’, even though the couple were spotted out jogging earlier this month.
Settling down to the meal at Claridge’s
‘They seemed like close friends’
in Mayfair for the 2016 shoot, Ms James confessed: ‘I’ve been waiting five years for a date with Dominic.’
She had met West when they starred in a stage production of Othello in 2011, and Luncheon magazine, a biannual cultural title, brought them together again for a regular feature in which two celebrities shoot the breeze over a meal.
At the time, Ms James was regarded as one of the most promising acting stars, following starring roles in the BBC’s adaptation of War And Peace and the liveaction version of Disney’s Cinderella. She was two years into a relationship with Doctor Who star Matt Smith.
Meanwhile West was riding high on the global success of HBO’s award-winning series The Affair, which was then gearing up for its third season. And he had been married six years to his aristocratic landscape gardener wife, with whom he has four children.
Ms James wore a sheer Erdem dress, before changing into a sequined gown, while West was dressed in a Paul
Smith tuxedo. A shoot source said: ‘The atmosphere was great. They were constantly laughing and joking around and seemed to get on really well. You wouldn’t have known it was five years since they had seen one another – they seemed like close friends.’
The feature reveals they chatted about a trip West was due to make with the BBC to the Himalayas. Referring to paragliding, the actress said: ‘You said you were going to jump off
a holy mountain?’ ‘Yes, it’s a mountain in the Himalayas and there is a holy man who lives there,’ West replied. Ms James said ‘that’s cool’ before asking: ‘Can I come?’ West joked: ‘Yes, that was our idea because the BBC wouldn’t have us, so they said, “How about Lily James?”’ The actress said she would ‘do it over any job opportunity’ but might ‘ruin the vibe.’ ‘Of course you wouldn’t ruin the vibe,’ said West, to which Ms James replied: ‘I might, if I wear this Erdem dress while jumping off.’
She later suggested their agent could join them on the trip.
Before the Rome incident, West and Ms James had been filming the BBC’s adaptation of Nancy
Mitford’s The Pursuit Of Love. The actress, who is single, has refused to comment on her relationship with West.