There is no way to get bored in the houses of Sienna Miller. Neither in her beautiful and bright apartment in New York’s West Village nor in her tiny (but much-photographed by design magazines) 16th-century country house in Buckinghamshire, the two places where the Anglo-American actress lives with her daughter Marlowe. and with the memory of a good handful of interesting women. With that of the writer Caitlin Macnamara, wife of the poet Dylan Thomas. With that of Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s tragic muse. With Francesca’s, the only woman Casanova failed to make his own. With that of Celia, the daughter of Duke Frederick from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. With that of Tippi Hedren, the actress from Marnie the Thief and The Birds, harassed and mistreated by the teacher. With Maggie, the character from The Cat on the Zinc Roof and with Sally Bowles from Cabaret. All of them have been played by Miller, who now presents herself to the world as Sophie Whitehouse, the wife betrayed by a British Conservative MP in Anatomy of a Scandal (Netflix). Cinema, theater, television: women and extraordinary lives.
“What a mess, huh?” Miller smiles, from his New York home. “When you study a text, when you really do your best to become someone else, to inhabit their world and create a moment of truth on stage or in front of the camera, something remains within you, even though the words may fade away. . I have a good memory and I remember the gags: from time to time I enjoy, with friends, quoting some to see if they recognize the character ».
Miller was -is- an influencer when the word or social networks did not yet exist, a matter that, by the way, she does not see favorably. For 20 years she has regularly appeared on the covers of fashion magazines and, although modeling is a profession of the past for her or almost, she is often seen on mood boards, those inspirational collages that stylists use as style guides. . Her bohemian air, of a bourgeois but nonconformist girl, is an eternal source of inspiration.
«Every time they ask me about my style, I answer that 20 years ago there were still no social tools to see other people’s outfits on a daily basis, it was all much more natural. Now they call that aesthetic ‘early 2000s style’, they talk about indie sleaze, but then we dressed how we wanted and there was no name for any style.
Miller is American and English, by fate and choice: “I was born here in the United States, to an English mother and an American father. I studied in England but for many years my base was New York because most of my work was here. But now it’s time to go back to England. The work has changed, now many attractive productions are in England ». She went through Heathfield, an elite boarding school for women, and the Lee Strasberg Institute, one of the most prestigious theater schools in Manhattan. The theater was the magic door that she went through to discover the profession of an actress: «Her love for the theater is a family affair: my mother took me with her since I was a child. She took me to the ballet, to the opera, to the theater. The idea was that even when she wasn’t old enough to understand what was going on there, she could absorb something, an idea of ??culture. Sure, I found it hard to sit for three hours, but I could get lost in the fantasies of the story I was watching and then something would change. Among my childhood memories are the lights going out, the murmur of expectation from the public… Then I sensed what I wanted to do with my life. Then I discovered that being an actress is a terrifying profession, based on a tension between desire and fear that never leaves you.
“There is a complicated relationship between stage fright and the hope of overcoming stage fright. There’s the adrenaline rush of facing your fears on stage and the promise of overcoming them. The reward is not fame, that is a consequence and it only happens if everything goes well. The real reward is losing yourself completely. The disappearance of the self, for an instant, being in the life of another. It’s good for the soul, but it’s also a strange job. The goal is to withdraw from yourself, but when you succeed, when you disappear, the result is that the ego expands. Well, over time the ego part weighs less when you compare it to the pure joy of disappearing.
That absolute, pure joy was evident in 2011, on the Royal Haymarket stage in London, where Miller mesmerized audiences and critics alike in Flare Path, a work by Terence Rattigan. She was then 29 years old and the world considered her then as a model who might become an actress. It was then that Miller’s perception changed.
And then Miller looks over his shoulder in the direction of his library.
«When we finish with the interview, I will read Hamlet again. When I was doing Cabaret on Broadway, I would bring home the character, which in the case of Sally Bowles involves a lot of things… Usually, I would also bring home the characters’ accents. Now I have a daughter and that makes everything more difficult. Do you come home to your little girl after playing Tennessee Williams and read her a story with a southern accent? It can’t be, it would be unsettling for those around you. Acting is empathizing with the life of the characters, it’s a radical act, but it’s not always nice to feel all those emotions inside of you. When I played Edie Sedgwick [in the 2006 film Factory Girl], my daughter didn’t exist yet. I spent three months inside that woman’s life and it was hard to get her out of my skin at the end of shooting. And she is also the adrenaline. You don’t control her: if they play a Cabaret song for me now, I know that she will give me an adrenaline rush. When I played Tennessee Williams on stage, and I did it for 120 nights, I cried on stage. So, when the play was over, at the time of the performance, wherever I was, I was assailed by a great sadness. The body remembered.
From a very young age, Miller has been seen accompanying and often stealing the spotlight from stars like Daniel Craig (Layer Cake) and Jude Law (Alfie). But, after many years, she refers to her job as a feminist act as well: «Being pretty, serving the male lead, lending yourself to the male gaze… At the beginning of your career that is what they offer you. But an actress always wants to play female leads. Today, the world is changing, the stories of strong female characters sell well… Fortunately ». Her cancellation culture worries her, even though she doesn’t like politics: “I worked with Tippi Hedren and I love her. Hitchcock treated her horribly, she was a morally indefensible man. Luckily now there is
Now, Miller is about to begin a very special work, a western saga written and directed by Kevin Costner three decades after Dances with Wolves. “I shouldn’t talk about it but I’m telling you anyway: I’m doing four movies with Kevin Costner. They tell the epic of the west for 15 years, as in a great historical novel. They will be released in the cinema every three months for a year. It’s a wonderful idea to get people back to theaters. The streaming broadcast will come later. When I received those four scripts I thought: this is a television series. And Kevin told me: no, there are four movies. They will be seen in the cinema, as I like, even if it sounds like a dinosaur. I don’t care, I still love the big screen experience. Kevin is a wonderful man and a wonderful director and he knows the American history of that period in a very deep way. I can not wait”.
While that moment arrives, Miller frequents another set, this time in fashion. In the next Twin Set campaign, she will be photographed by Lachlan Bailey: «I’ve never felt like a model, I’m too short. I worked as a model at the age of 19 to earn something while getting ahead as an actress. But it’s nice to be at this job again. At this point in my life, the people I work with count: there was an Italian brand here and a human value, the work is done by very nice people. And there is a very good photographer. What more could you want?”. Miller is on Instagram. She has 1.2 million followers and never posts anything. She laughs: “Apparently if you’re an actress you can’t not have Instagram. They asked me to open a profile, I opened it. So I thought: do I have to take selfies now? Dance in the dressing room? And I came to the conclusion that no, I’m sorry. Can’t”.
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