Astrology for millennials

Business is booming for Chani Nicholas. The LA-based astrologer has 321,000 followers on Instagram, and a million people (most of them under 35) visit her website each month. People say astrology caters to narcissists; but she thinks it’s more about a search for meaning. “My childhood was one of fairly severe neglect,” she told Barbara McMahon in The Times. “The adults around me were preoccupied with their lives, their needs and their addictions and I was low on the list. I learnt how to take care of myself, how to be alone and how to struggle through a lot of stuff.” Then, aged 12, she had her first astrological reading. “I felt like I existed more, through having someone see me. It’s a core need – humans need to be witnessed, they need to be reflected.”

People’s assumptions about Bill Nighy are often wrong, says Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. The actor – who is famous for his snappy dress sense – tends to be regarded as a “cool cat”. People imagine that he is relaxed and comfortable in his own skin. “I get called lots of ‘L’ words,” he says. “Louche, languid, laconic. A lounge lizard, like I’m a nuisance around women.” Actually, he is none of those things. Fretful, under-confident and deeply self-critical, he won’t read his own interviews, because they send him into a fugue, and he hates seeing himself on screen – for a reason he considers obvious. “Well, you look terrible according to you, unless you’re a weirdo and you look at yourself and think, ‘Wow, I look pretty good.’ But I’m not one of those. So there’s that to get over, and then you’ve got to watch yourself act and see yourself not pulling off all those things you thought you might, this time, have pulled off. Instead, you did that default thing that you always do. You think, ‘I did that again? Are you serious?’” In fact, if he does catch a glimpse of one of his own performances, it can take him quite a long time to recover. “Because all my fears about my inadequacies are confirmed when I watch myself. I know there’s an answer, and the answer is, get over yourself. That’s hard. I suppose it’s a form of dysmorphia. I mean, I hope it’s a form of dysmorphia.”