Bohemian Rhapsody star Lucy: How I felt when Rami Malek told the world that he loved me
SHE has been acting since she was 12, won worldwide fame with her first big film role and melted the heart of a Hollywood A-lister.
But Bohemian Rhapsody star Lucy Boynton says that, despite her skyrocketing career and romance with Rami Malek, she has struggled with low selfconfidence.
Born in New York but raised in London, 28year-old Lucy says having two journalists as parents should have helped prepare her for life in the spotlight. ‘Hearing about interviews with actors from Mum made me slightly less intimidated,’ she says. ‘But I forget it all as soon as I walk into one because I get so nervous.’
She credits the award-winning Freddie Mercury biopic – playing his friend Mary Austin, for whom he wrote Love Of My Life – with boosting her confidence. With that film, she hit the big time, romantically as well as in her career. In his Oscars acceptance speech for best actor in 2019, Malek, 40, who played Mercury, said: ‘Lucy Boynton, you are the heart of this film. You are beyond immensely talented. You have captured my heart. Thank you so much.’
Lucy says: ‘It sounds so silly but I was really unaware of the public element of that. You’re just absorbing, millisecond by millisecond, what is happening, and then suddenly you hear the applause and you realise it’s been a public moment, which is slightly strange.’
The star of the Irish comingof-age film Sing Street adds: ‘From Bohemian Rhapsody I learned that people want to talk to you about what’s going on. It can be really intimidating but I try to remember that everyone... is winging it. I’ve grown up in a very creative environment... that doesn’t follow a specific structure and that has been freeing, because when my job hasn’t followed a specific path there’s been no panic.’