and, for about a year, she has been with Lucas Zwirner, son of super-
gallerist David Zwirner, who she met when he was ushering her
around a Diane Arbus photography show. ‘He’s not an actor! He’s not
famous!’ she says proudly of their relationship. He is the one thing she
is tight-lipped about, even referring to him as ‘he who shall not be named’,
a savvy move after years of the spotlight shining on her romantic life.
While the paparazzi do still snap her, it’s not as crazy as it once
was. And she’s got a more relaxed perspective around it. ‘I’ll be
walking my child to school and they’ll take photos, which is enraging.
[But] they’re quite... I don’t want to say respectful, because I find it an
incredibly disrespectful profession, but they’re not in our faces,’ she
says. ‘I just try to ignore it.’ Though Marlowe does get a bit freaked by
the cameras, she’s also impressed by the right amount of attention.
‘She’s proud if we’re walking down the street and someone says
something nice,’ she beams. ‘She’s like, “Yeah, go Mum!”’f this all sounds like the rosiest symmetry to life, it was never
a guarantee. It was always her goal to be a serious actress.
Growing up between London and Wiltshire with a yoga teacher
mum, an art dealer dad, and Kelly Hoppen for a stepmother,
by the time she hit boarding school in Berkshire, she yearned,
not for fame, but for a creative existence. ‘I was naughty and arty and
funny. I wore two different trainers – I bought a patent red pair and a lime
green pair and I’d wear one red and one green. I was a bit out there, with
pink hair. The idea of joining any form of bohemia was always alluring.’
And yet, because she was introduced to the public through the
aggressive lens of the paparazzi, she wasn’t allowed a slow burn
artistic rise. She was in her early twenties and getting started when she
began to date the already-famous and very-recently-divorced Jude Law
in 2OO3. Their relationship was thrown into the meat grinder, making
her a sensation in the gossip rags before she had even been on cinema
screens. ‘I fell in love with someone very famous and that became the story- it was bad timing. I had an amazing
time, but it would have been nice if that
hadn’t happened before I was known
for something else,’ she says. ‘It was
a battle to be seen as something else.’
This was a moment when many
young women – Britney Spears, Amy
Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan – were
hounded mercilessly in the media,
their missteps and marriages and late
nights documented as though they
were breaking news. Miller was a
perfect target: beautiful, stylish and,
yes, an enjoyer of good times. As the
internet developed into a 24 -hour
feed of infotainment, her glittering
life was a reliable source of content. It’s worth noting that, while many
other celebrities of the era crumbled under the pressure, Miller somehow
survived. ‘You’re photographed coming out of some pub, you’ve had
too much to drink and you’re in your twenties,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t
healthy behaviour, but it wasn’t abnormal. I definitely have a hedonistic
streak. Thank god I was never a heavy drug user. I was just frivolous in
some way. I didn’t have a business head. I wasn’t being well managed.
I have always been someone who is professional and on time and
not an arsehole on set, but I suppose life in between was chaotic.
I just don’t think I was ready. I wanted to live. And I did.’
130 ELLE.COM/UK Nove mbe r 2O19
Miller has the court documents to prove how deranged it became.
In 2O11, she sued tabloid paper News of the World after word broke that
it had been hacking into the phones of prominent people and listening
to voicemails. ‘We had a sense something was going on because
things were coming out [in the tabloids] that couldn’t have come from
another source,’ she says sharply. ‘It was a period of intense paranoia.’
She won the case, accepted £1OO,OOO and an apology, and the
tabloid closed that year. In a post- Cambridge Analytica world, when
everyone has some eerie sense of being eavesdropped on, Miller
was an early witness to the oncoming data dystopia. ‘The emotional
response was rage,’ she says. ‘It was nice [to win the case], but, yeah,
if you have a phone, it’s probably listening to you.’
She also fell onto the wrong side of Har vey Weinstein, though
never sexually, and is extremely careful when discussing it. ‘He called
me in to his office – he had just bought [2OO6’s Factory Girl]. He sat
me down, stood up, and said, “You’re not partying any more.” It felt
like a paternal lecture,’ she remembers. ‘He slammed the door and
I burst into tears, then he came back in and went, “It’s because I’m
f* cking proud of you.” And slammed it again.’ At the time, she thought
this kind of patronising takedown was a burden that women were
expected to bear; suffice to say, she’s thrilled about the Time’s Up
and #MeToo movements. ‘Women have been undermined and
undervalued,’ she says. ‘That this is happening is essential.’
Miller says her thirties have provided clarity. ‘There’s relief in it
for me,’ she says. ‘The stillness, the sense of impending wisdom.’
Now, on the relaxed side of 35, if she continues to find roles like
American Woman, she will be in Oscar and BAFTA conversations.
‘It’s raised the standard of what I want to do. I hope to find rich
characters with strong arcs who represent real women,’ she says.
The good news for Miller is that she’s playing the long game, and
there’s a rich tradition of women actors from the UK getting better as they
age, many securing their widest acclaim in their seventies and eighties:
Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench, Helen
Mirren, Maggie Smith, and Glenda
Jackson – who Miller was so thrilled
to meet at this year’s Met Gala that
she broke her no-cigarette rule to
share one with the 83-year-old icon.
‘There are English movie stars who
have normal lives and longevity,’ she
says. ‘There have been moments when
I was incredibly famous and it doesn’t
suit me. I just can’t. I’m terrible at it.’
Instead, she’ll continue to pick
roles when they are good and when
she needs the money, but only when
it makes sense with her daughter’s
schedule. And she will continue to
train at being the best actor she can be. ‘I could have taken routes that
would have been bigger and flashier,’ she says. ‘I think I’m at a point
where my life is so enriched by other things that a need for approval
has completely dispersed. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I feel like
the people who I would want respect from probably respect me.’ Most
of all, she will continue to find a balance between celebrity and sanity
that works for her. ‘I’m here today, a mother with a career,’ she says,
a bit of a shock in her voice that she’s sur vived and thrived. ‘Looking
back, I’m kind of amazed that I managed to get through it.’
American Woman is in cinemas 11 OctoberI
“ I H AV E A LWAY S SOMEONE
WHO IS PROFESSIONAL
AND AN ARSEHOLE ON SE T,
BUT I SUPPOSE LIFE
IN BE T WEEN CHAOTIC ”