Evening Standard - ES Magazine
Agyness Deyn
The model and actress talks catching the acting bug and losing her nerve with Lucy Hunter Johnston
At 29, do you feel like a veteran next to all the teenage models? I feel a lot different to when I started out at 17. When you go on a job, the experience of modelling is familiar but that shoot is new to you. If there’s a younger model with me, we’re both experiencing it for the first time so we’re both new to it. Who would you most like to see win at the Oscars? I loved Moneyball [starring Brad Pitt], so I’d love that to win a few. And Meryl Streep is my queen. Are you adventurous? I’ve always been seeking adventure. I was a fearless teenager, always up for causing trouble and doing risky things with friends. I look back and can’t believe I did it. I’d be too scared now. Such as? On holiday in Tenerife I decided that it would be a good idea to jump into the pool from a few storeys up. I ended up cracking my heel. And I used to be an acrobatic skier, always jumping off ramps, then one day I just got the fear and stopped. What made you try acting? I just really wanted to explore it. I had a ‘ falling in love at first sight’ vibe with the whole process; it’s so fulfilling and challenging. Does this feel like jumping in at the deep end? A bit. The moment I read the script for The Leisure Society I knew I wanted to do it, but it wasn’t until the read-through that I realised, ‘ I’m really doing this.’ It’s just like driving a car: you have to keep on driving until it becomes second nature – at the moment it feels like I’m doing a lot of stalling. Are you enjoying rehearsals? I love the feeling of family among the cast. I’m used to flying solo with modelling so I’m loving the sense of teamwork. The play you’re doing is a comedy; have you always been able to make people laugh? I’ve got quite a dry sense of humour and I have that Northern thing of taking the piss out of everyone – and myself. What is it that Northerners have that Southerners don’t? A sense of humour! How will you deal with stage fright? My character, Paula, is unfazed by anything – she’s a free spirit – and I think that will help. I’m trying to intellectualise it by thinking, ‘ Well, my character feels this...’ but I’m going to be s***ing myself. What’s your biggest stage nightmare? Going blank at the same time everybody else goes blank. The Leisure Society is at Trafalgar Studio 2 from 28 February (0844 871 7627; atgtickets.com)
‘ACTING IS LIKE DRIVING A CAR. I’M STALLING A LOT AT THE MOMENT’
Alexa Chung levitating on swords and supermodels dancing on tables to Led Zeppelin… Last Saturday was the night that Stella Mccartney
upped the fashion-show
ante with a ‘presentation’ more like a piece of performance art than a runway show. Presenting a collection of figure- hugging eveningwear in a deconsecrated Mayfair church,
Stella invited guests including Kate Moss and Rihanna to a
formal sixcourse veggie dinner, which by 11pm had segued into an expertly choreographed frenzy of dancing supermodels such as Amber Valletta being twirled around by dapper waiters. The day before Orla Kiely had
hosted an ‘afternoon tea dance’ in place of her show and Moncler had an ice rink and an acapella choir in New York. So we say au revoir to the conventional catwalk fashion
show: it is, quite simply, so
last season. who was hanging by a trotter in the shop’s walk-in fridge, an Aladdin’s cave of flesh. Duncan, the cheery butcher who was acting as my tutor for the afternoon, expertly threw half her carcass over his burly shoulder and slammed her on to the block, where she lay expectantly, waiting for me to start hacking in.
Although I have always been an avid carnivore – it’s a running joke in my family that I like my steak to moo – I was concerned that being presented with an actual bloody cadaver to dissect would make me squeamish. Indeed,
and I started to long for the pre-cut shrink-wrapped meat at my local Tesco.
But once you get down to the actual butchery, the animal quickly ceases to bear any resemblance to Babe and I began to forget I was even dealing with meat. In fact,
As Duncan kept reminding me, ‘Butchery is all just seams’ – just like sewing but with muscle and bone in place of cross-stitching and hemming.
Duncan was extremely informative, and was even kind enough to pay me the odd compliment during the one-on-one class, although I could tell by his winces as I sawed my way through the ribs that I was making a real hash of things. In fact he was so encouraging, and I was having such a brilliant time, that I was about to offer my services as his apprentice, until
He breezily catalogued a terrifying range of accidents, from lost fingers to falling meat hooks disfiguring faces.
However cathartic and exhilarating my afternoon was, I think I’ll stick to the desk job, but never again will I take it as an insult when I am told I’ve butchered something – it’s a lot harder than it looks. £220 for three hours, including meat (parsonsnose.co.uk)