Lily James

From the award-winning Darkest Hour to a joyful musical hit, the versatile British actress continues to enchant audiences with her effortless wit, charm and accomplishments.

A year in the life of Lily James is like a global tour through time. On our screens in 2018 there was the Oscar-winning Darkest Hour and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, both set in World War II, followed by Little Woods, a modern Western unfolding in a deprived corner of contemporary America, and then – of course – Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, in which James played a young Meryl Streep, dancing and singing her way through the 1970s and reducing stern film critics to self-confessed tears. That James can do all these things speaks to her talent, obviously, but also to her chutzpah. Why wouldn’t you do them? ‘My problem,’ says James when we meet, ‘is that I want to make the most of this moment, I want be in the now, I want to enjoy it to the full!’ Even if it means losing her voice (she has become a great advocate of honey and lemon).

But James, now 29, is something of a veteran, knowing when to take breaks, when to stop. She has to, ‘because you need a moment to let go of characters and people that you work with and different places that you’ve lived’. It’s a lot to be always ‘holding and never really shedding’. So she’s also spent a while shedding, and processing the tumultuous year in her industry. ‘Something has shifted,’ she tells me, of the world post-Weinstein. ‘Now I feel like a natural step on from this is making sure that there are more women in power. I want to work with more women, female directors and directors of photography, to be surrounded more equally by men and women.’ True to form, she’s about to star in a cast of formidable females including Gillian Anderson and Monica Dolan, in a West End production of All About Eve. Like everything else she does, it will be a full immersion. ‘I think that’s why I like it,’ she says of acting. ‘I like that emotional journey. The ability to fall into something and go to the extremes.’ ‘All About Eve’ is at the Noël Coward Theatre (www.noelcowardtheatre.co.uk) from 2 February 2019.