44 THECUTAUGUSTSEPTEMBER,
E HEARD of Method actors.
y Boynton is a Method dresser.
pre-Oscars dinner last February,
e midst of Bohemian Rhapso-
awards-season sweep, she paired
eed Chanel dress with a white
t, dramatic turquoise eye
ow, and just a pinch of blood-
l st. “My makeup artist Jo Baker and
I talk about which character we want
to be tonight,” Boynton says. “For this
Chanel look, we decided it was ‘serial-killer housewife.’ It’s very much about, How do you
want to feel tonight? How do you want to look?”
When I meet the 25-year-old British actress on a warm summer
afternoon in New York, where she is based temporarily for work,
she doesn’t look as if she’s about to dump a vial of arsenic into her
ex-husband’s Chablis. Rather, she possesses the precociousness of
a character from a British children’s book. She has asked me to
meet her at midtown’s historic Morgan Library; if she were to push
open one of the bookshelves and lead me into Narnia, I wouldn’t
be surprised. “This is exquisite. When can I move in?” she gasps,
gazing at the rows of triple-tiered inlaid-walnut bookshelves lining
the walls. I’m yammering away at full volume, yet Boynton never
raises her voice above a deferential hush. “Imagine having a wed-
ding here,” she whispers to our eager tour guide, who
says that while they don’t technically do weddings,
they could probably pull some strings for her. “Per-
fect,” she says, “because I want to have a wedding
here, but I don’t want anyone else to.”
While most 20-something actresses slouch
around in athleisure, Boynton looks like she could
step behind a glass display case and become one of
the Morgan’s exhibits (e.g., “Evolution of the Posh
British Schoolgirl in the Popular Imagination”).
Boynton is wearing red patent Mary Janes, tortoise-
shell cat’s-eye glasses, a Dior shoulder bag, and a long
white shirtdress. She resembles the granddaughter
of a Hitchcock heroine as drawn by Tim Burton—all
spindly legs and bright, inquisitive eyes. There used
to be a button shaped like a creepy eyeball on the
collar, she says, but it fell off. She describes a recent
trip to a vintage store with her co-star turned boy-
friend, Rami Malek. “I held up a dress and he said,
‘Why are you always trying to dress like a 12-year-old
ghost?’ ” she says, pressing the tip of her nose so close
to a framed Maurice Sendak illustration that it threatens to leave
a smudge. “I was one of those kids who never wanted to grow up.”
Boynton began her career as a child actress in a series of
films plucked from a prep-school syllabus. Her first role was as
a young Beatrix Potter inMiss Potter,which she followed with
adaptations of Noel Streatfeild’sBalletShoesandJaneAusten’s
Sense and Sensibility.After a hiatus from acting to finish high
school—her parents, both journalists, insisted on it—she con-
tinued on this period-film route, embodying a New Wave bad
girl inSing Streetand brushing up on her Agatha Christie for
2017’sMurder on the Orient Express.But her biggest role came
last year, playing Freddie Mercury’s fiancée, Mary Austin, in
Bohemian Rhapsody.This September, Boynton will take a
:
PACO RABANNE
dress, at
pacorabanne.com;
JENNIFER BEHR
earrings (in hair), at
jenniferbehr.com;
HARRY WINSTON
necklace and
earrings, at
harrywinston.com;
CHANEL FINE
JEWELRY ring,
call 800-550-0005 for
more information.ERDEM coat
and hat, at erdem.com;
TIFFANY & CO.
earrings, at tiffany.com.