PHOTOGRAPHED BY GREGORY HARRIS FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE. STYLED BY ELIN SVAHN FOR CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE
WATCH IT!
The Girl On
The Train is in
cinemas now.Every so often an actress emerges seemingly from
out of nowhere – years ploughing away in theatre,
a breakthrough role in an Oscar-baity drama –
and is suddenly in every movie at the multiplex. It
happened in 2011 with Jessica Chastain, while 2015
has surely been renamed the Year Of Alicia Vikander.
Meet 2016’s go-to ingenue: Haley Bennett. This
year alone the 28-year-old has starred alongside
Chris Pratt in The Magnificent Seven, and films with
Ryan Gosling, Warren Beatty and Amy Schumer will
follow. But first up is The Girl On The Train, a
psychological thriller based on Paula Hawkins’s
bestselling novel. Bennett tore through the book in
just two days while filming The Magnificent Seven.
“I was working with a slew of gentlemen,” she says.
“So the female-driven aspect is what hooked me in.”
Less than a week after finishing the novel she
received a call from director Tate Taylor. The
filmmaker was adapting The Girl On The Train and
he wanted Bennett to join Emily Blunt and star as
Megan, the troubled missing woman at the heart of
the story. “The costume designer on The Magnificent
Seven told [Taylor]: ‘I’ve found your Megan.’ To
which I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can take that
as a compliment,’” Bennett says, laughing.
Blunt might be the proponent of the film’s
story, but it’s Bennett that you can’t stop
watching. They used to call it star power: that
combination of charisma, intelligence and a hint
of otherworldliness. It’s why Bennett’s dance card
is suddenly so full, and why she has had to get used
to “putting on some gowns and shaking a lot of
hands”, as she puts it. On the possibility of
impending mega-fame, Bennett is optimistic. “I’m
approaching it with an open mind,” she smiles.GIRL OF
won’t be able to miss Haley Bennett