Her dark materials

Hermione Eyre cracks through the sugary surface to discover Lily James’ darker side

‘I think you’re at your sexiest when you’re at your most free,

and uninhibited, and bold. Power is sexy’ – Lily James

‘MAYBE I SHOULD BE A BITCH NOW.’ Lily James is considering reinventing herself. She laughs, but you can see why the idea is in her mind. The girlishness of Countess Natasha Rostova in the BBC1 epic historical drama War & Peace, and the saccharin sweetness of Cinderella in Kenneth Branagh’s Disney remake, combined with Lily’s own natural warmth, have all coalesced into a rather candycoated public persona – one she now longs to break away from. ‘I’m so much more than those roles. I can be challenging too – I’m not always sunny in the way people might expect. I’m not afraid to insult people, not purposefully, but… to have strength of conviction and trust myself.’

I meet Lily, 27, at Burberry’s London headquarters, where she’s having a fitting for a film festival gown. She greets me warmly, looking casual in minimal make-up and Isabel Marant dungarees, with her slept-in hair piled on top of her head. She’s slightly shy, holding herself in reserve until we decide to do the interview on the move. As we walk across the sunbaked streets lining the Thames, her Converse slapping against the pavement, she starts talking, intently and from the heart – a tumbling flow of questions and concerns, beliefs and anxieties. ‘I’m quite an emotional person, and I’m sensitive in that I care about a lot of things. It can make you vulnerable. Everyone has darkness in them, don’t they?’

Yes, Lily is delightfully cheerful with the fans and children we meet during our two-mile walk. And yes, she actually stops to

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admire flowers. And when she laughs – really laughs – it turns into a sweet, unexpected snort. But she is a deep thinker and, by her own admission, a ‘stress head’. Case in point: she has three months coming up without any job commitments. Some would see this as a well-deserved break after a West End play – Romeo and Juliet – and two major films, except she’s prey to that irrational insecurity so many of us secretly nurse: ‘A part of me thinks, “Oh no, this is terrible – no one wants me any more. I’m old news!”’

This is all despite the fact that at the precise moment I meet her she’s at a peak of insane demand, nine weeks into a 12-week soldout run of the play at the Garrick Theatre, for which her performance of Juliet has had rave reviews. ‘I’m in a little world of my own doing this play,’ she says. She is conserving her energy to stay strong enough to play Juliet every night (and twice on Wednesdays); her biggest indulgence is a slug of brandy in her hot lemon drink after the show, and a massive lie-in. ‘I need eight hours. It’ll be hell when I have kids.’

The destination of our walk is Sloane Square’s Royal Court Theatre, where she is catching a matinee of Unreachable starring her boyfriend, former Doctor Who star Matt Smith. I note that it’s very Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of them to be starring on two of London’s stages at the same time. ‘I’ll take that,’ she laughs. This is the only chance Lily has to see her boyfriend’s show. ‘I have to be there on time. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him on stage,’ she says, a mix of excitement and nervous expectation.

She and Matt have been together for almost two years (this year, they also co-starred in the rom-zom-com slasher film Pride And Prejudice And Zombies), but when I ask how they met she smiles down at her shoes. ‘There are a few theories on that. Whether they’re true or not… I need to be protective of my personal life and self, in a way.’

Their friends are a tight-knit group of actors including Freddie Fox, Douglas Booth and Billie Piper, though she admits that she can oscillate between being a party girl and a loner: ‘I love dancing but I don’t do it very much now unless I’m drunk. Me and Matt have been known to dance on a table, though…’ She also has a strong introverted side: ‘I can be quite a solitary person and I need to be alone quite a lot. Or [alone] with Matt.’

In August, her campaign as the global face of Burberry’s new amber perfume, My Burberry Black, was revealed. Shocker: Cinderella gets her kit off. In the pulse-quickening new advert, Lily has been shot by Mario Testino wearing little more than a lot of bronzer on her skin. ‘The pictures are very sensual and seductive, and people are a bit shocked to think I would do that based on the period roles I’ve played.’ It wasn’t a calculated decision to shatter her Pollyanna typecasting, she says: ‘It just felt natural. And it’s nice to explore different sides of yourself.’ In this case, the sultry, low-lit side. ‘I felt really confident and sexy. I think you’re at your sexiest when you’re at your most free and uninhibited, and bold. Power is sexy. So is being open, innocent and vulnerable, but trying too hard is not sexy. Or thinking about it too much. I’ve got drawers of sexy underwear that I never wear because I’m much sexier when I’m not trying.’ Such as in today’s dungarees? ‘My dungarees probably aren’t that sexy…’

SO WHAT HAS DEFINED HER FEMININITY? As a middle child with two brothers, growing up in Esher, Surrey, Lily was a tomboy. ‘It was very rough and tumble. I was big boned and I was always jumping on them.’ She’s recently been watching some old home videos that her mum has transferred to DVD and in one her dad James, an actor/musician/writer, was encouraging her across a ‘ridiculously high’ assault course, shouting, ‘GO LILY, GO!’

And yet, there was always a different side to her. She cites another home video of herself aged four that shocked her: ‘I’m singing and it’s really quite provocative,’ she says, miming a childish voguing dance. ‘At one point my little cape slips off my shoulder…’ Just as the strap slips from her shoulder in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet. ‘Where does that come from?’ she asks. ‘How do you learn to flirt? Is it because it’s everywhere around us, culturally? Or is it more intrinsic? Maybe we’re born like that.’

She describes watching these old videos as ‘just so enjoyable, so happy’, which is in itself a small act of bravery. She lost her adored father to cancer when she was a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She loved the course but her emotions were naturally all over the place during that time. ‘It was the most insane, brilliant, f**ked up time of my life; a rush of feeling

and change, and nothing was very stable.’ She was in love too, with a jazz trumpeter. ‘First love is the most powerful feeling I have ever experienced,’ she says. ‘But we become cynical and bruised by life.’ The memories from that madness she describes as ‘smells and sounds, coffee, hip-hop and R&B, Craig David, All Saints.’ How did it end? A guilty laugh. ‘I fell in love with someone else.’

SHE FREQUENTLY MENTIONS HER FATHER, who seems very present to her (and not only because it was his first name, James, that she chose as her surname when searching for a stage alternative to her birth name, Thompson). ‘My dad was very spiritual and I went with him a couple of times to the Kaygu Samye Ling [Tibetan Buddhist Monastery] in Scotland. I was really into [Buddhist] ideas and that sense of spirituality, and it was a strong connection I had with my father.’ She breaks off, drawing back, watching her step on the curb. I get the impression going further could be painful for her.

Randomly, at this point we pass the brick wall against which she posed for her first ever newspaper photo shoot, just as she was graduating from Guildhall. She stops for a moment to find the pictures on her phone to show me – in them she’s wearing clogs, a baggy shirt and a nonplussed expression. ‘I was so uncomfortable with the whole process!’ What advice would she give that 19 year old? ‘Relax. Don’t take everything so seriously. Don’t aim to please people all the time.’

Now she longs for work that pushes her. ‘You read a lot of scripts where the girl parts are boring… [at this point I swerve to body block her from traffic; I can’t let Lily James die on my watch] …girlfriend roles, in a word. I’ve been really lucky in the parts I’ve done, but I can complain for the greater good.’ Her next roles include a Jewish Dutch woman in the period drama The Kaiser’s Last Kiss (‘It’s a really topsy-turvy relationship where they have sex before they even have a conversation’) and a waitress from America’s deep south in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver.

There are, she believes, ‘many, many’ battles to be won in the industry’s fight for gender equality. ‘But the brilliant thing is that it’s now being addressed so openly. Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence and Lena Dunham are all so inspiring and I feel totally swept up in the movement, even though I haven’t had a pay-gap experience in the same way as them due to doing a different type of work. But we all need to join together from the smallest jobs to big blockbuster movies.’ Does she have pay parity, for example, with Romeo (Richard Madden)? ‘I’d certainly hope so and I’d ensure my agent made sure that was the case.’

A barista runs across the street, apron flapping, proffering napkins. Will she sign them? He even knows Cinderella’s catchphrase. ‘Could you put “Have courage and be kind”?’ he asks, explaining that they are for his twin nieces. Lily can’t resist muttering afterwards: ‘Maybe it was actually for him…’

She is adjusting to stardom. She demonstrates her ‘paparazzi face’ that can kill an unauthorised photo by whipping out her pink iPhone and pretending to be on it while looking grumpily at the photographer. No street value to that snap. Business class travel and designer handbags feel a little alien. ‘I find it really hard to spend a lot of money on stuff. With my first big paycheck I bought a Chloé handbag that was £700, but I couldn’t handle it so I took it back!’ After a show, she is often asked to sign hundreds of programmes. ‘It’s really nice because all you want is for people to enjoy it, but it can be overwhelming.’

OUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT. Admitting defeat, we hail a taxi, and she arrives at the Royal Court Theatre just in time, disappearing with a kiss and a promise to get me tickets to Romeo and Juliet. Days later, I take her up on the offer, but the show is in trouble. Richard Madden is off due to a broken ankle and his understudy has also dropped out with an injury. Kenneth Branagh steps on stage to announce that Freddie Fox is filling the breach. It is thrilling to see the sparks flying between these two old friends and last minute co-stars. They win a huge standing ovation. After the show, the crowd of fans waiting for Lily at the stage door is so deep that barricades have been put up. ‘It’s mental,’ says the stage door keeper. ‘She ought to just slip away through the other side.’ But the crowds won’t go away. It’s Lily they want. The tide in her direction feels like an unstoppable force.

Lily James is the new face of My Burberry Black, £65 for 50ml. For ELLE’s edit of the best new-season elevated sweaters, turn to p121

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