Bel Powley (who’s
way more than just
the Teenage Girl
she won us over
with) explains how
to win at lifeBel Powley experienced a rocket-fast
ascent to fame with her first-ever major
film,The Diary Of A Teenage Girl– her
portrayal of 15-year-old Minnie’s coming
of age saw her nominated for more than
a dozen awards (several of which she
won) and named “female revelation of
the year” at Cannes. So how do you
back that up? For Powley, it was by
sticking to her guns with a considered
choice of meaningful, complex and
feminist characters. The latest? As drug
addict Dawn Wershe – opposite
Matthew McConnaughey – inWhite
Boy Rick, based on the real-life case
of the FBI’s youngest-ever informant.
Consider this your how-to for the
ultimate in personal reinventions.DON’T FEAR THE UNKNOWN
“It was weird that my first film [The Diary
Of A Teenage Girl] was such a success,
because afterward it was like, “What
happens now? Is it all downhill from
here?” It was a hell of a starting place- I loved working with the director
[Marielle Heller] and I related to the
character of Minnie so much because I’d
never truly seen a teenage girl portrayed
like that – and so coming off the film and
its press tour and going back to the grind
was an adjustment. The challenge was
in finding projects that excited me in the
same way, but I eventually did.”
GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
“Theatre and film feel like two completely
different jobs, because it’s like I’m
exercising completely different muscles,
but I really couldn’t do one without the
other. I learnt most of what I know from
being on stage; it’s kind of the basis
from where I work. I love the immediacy
and rawness of theatre. When you
do a movie, you can change your
performance 10 times in 10 different
takes, but with theatre you only get
one shot on that particular night. But then
you do the same play every night and
it’s interesting the way your character
develops really slowly – by the 70th night
it’s morphed and changed but you
haven’t even noticed it happening.”NEVER DO THINGS BY HALVES
“I watched a lot of YouTube videos
of people smoking crack to prepare
[for the role of Dawn]. It sounds
ridiculous, but I found out that’s what
Naomie Harris did when she played
a crackhead inMoonlight. It was really
the only way to add that to my repertoire- it’s not like I could draw on my own
experience. Matthew and I were also
very in-character on set. Our characters’
[father-daughter] relationship is quite
strained, so we had to stay in that space
to make it truthful. We weren’t fully
‘method’ but we did keep our distance.
I think it would have been weird for
us to play those characters and then
go and have a beer afterwards.”AVOID REINVENTING THE WHEEL
“A role doesn’t have to be completely
new to be interesting; I much prefer
seeing new takes on existing people or
narratives. I recently did an independent
film directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour
calledMary Shelley– Elle Fanning
played Mary and I played her stepsister
Claire. Mary was famous for writing
Frankenstein, which is a story we all
know and love, but the director Haifaa
wanted to show Mary and Claire as
people had never seen them before- as the young feminists they were. It’s
important to go back in history and pluck
out female figures and get to the bottom
of who they were, because often we
think of them as quite one-dimensional.
Any female character that is multi-
faceted will do for me right now!”E
White Boy Rick is out February 7
WHILE YOU
WAIT...
...for your favourite series
to return to TV screens, catch some
of their biggest stars in a swathe
of new movies.
BIG LITTLE LIES’Meryl Streep in
Mary Poppins Returns(January 1)
and Kathryn Newton in family
dramaBen Is Back(January 31).
GAME OF THRONES’
Gwendoline Christie in the uplifting
Welcome To Marwen(January
10) and Sophie Turner inX-men
spin-offDark Phoenix(February 7).
STRANGER THINGS’Sadie Sink
in creepy horror flickEli
(out January 31).TV
how to
top your
personal
best