HER NEW DISNEY ROLE
said. “I can compartmentalise to a degree. I love my job, but it has always been very much a job to me and I don’t think that success or failure defines me.
“I’ve made mistakes in my career and done things that I would not choose to do now. That affects me pretty deeply.
“But when it comes to success or failure of the film itself, or if my performance is really s***, I was trying something, I was grateful for the challenge and I was grateful for the opportunity.
“A lot of people talk about getting a thick skin and don’t let things bother you but to be an artist, you actually need to have thin skin.
“I think that weakness of being vulnerable and having a thin skin is incredibly important.
“I guess my thin skin would be my weakness that I am glad I have.” Cruella focuses on the dark side of a young Estella Miller – a grafter determined to make a name for herself in the fashion world.
When Estella meets two thieves who admire her appetite for mischief, they go on to build a life for themselves on the streets of London.
But when Estella befriends fashion legend Baroness von Hellman – played by another Emma, British actress Dame Emma Thompson – she embraces her wicked side and goes on to become the raucous and revenge-bent Cruella de Vil.
Playing the baddie also inspired Emma to examine the morals of the Disney story. She said: “I had a lot of questions. In some ways, I believe it’s very much a cautionary tale. But I do think she’s pretty inspiring so, to me, it’s sort of a story of nature versus nurture. It was a very fun character to explore and to find the cracks in that villainous armour that we’ve all grown to know and love.”
Despite Cruella’s already huge box office success, Emma remains coy about any potential sequel. “We’ve got to wait and see how it does before making that kind of proclamation,” she said.
But sequel or no sequel, Emma will surely have the last laugh.
It was fun to find cracks in villainous armour we have grown to love
ACTRESS EMMA ON PLAYING BADDIE CRUELLA