SIENNA MILLER
POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE
With four films on the horizon, 2008 is the year that Sienna enjoys the view
Text by Bret Love - Photo: Mike Owen - AJR - Eyevine
Don’t look now, but 2008 may be the year in which Sienna Miller finally makes international headlines for something other than whom she happens to be kissing. Hounded by intense media scrutiny in her early twenties, the New York-born actress has wisely chosen in recent years to focus on her career. The result? Four films slated for release in 2008, including the hotly anticipated The Edge of Love, in which Miller replaced Lindsay Lohan alongside close friend Keira Knightley.
Miller plays one of two feisty women who fall madly in love with poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) and reveals that her love scenes with Knightley are particularly sensual. “The bath scene is very erotic,” she admits teasingly. “There’s been a lot of talk about it, and I suppose the whole lesbian ménage-a-trois thing is great publicity for the film. Keira plays the temptress [Thomas’ childhood friend, Vera] and I play a more reserved person [his wife, Caitlin]. The setting in the Welsh hills couldn’t be more entrancing.”
Born December 28, 1981 to New York banker Ed Miller and his wife, Jo, who ran London’s prestigious Lee Strasberg drama school, Sienna claims to have had her mind set on a career as an actress for as long as she can remember. “It was always what I wanted or was going to do,” she recalls. “I never really allowed myself to think about anything else. I think I was brought up in a very creative environment. My mother went into labour during a ballet. I was taken to the theatre and ballet and opera all of the time, so I was constantly surrounded by creative influences. I went to the theatre and saw these people dressing up and playing for a living and I thought, ‘This sounds like a pretty good job!’”
After studying at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, she got her debut film role in 2001, appearing alongside Rupert Everett in South Kensington. But it took three more years (and a part on the U.S. TV series Keen Eddie) before Miller made her breakthrough starring opposite future Bond Daniel Craig in Layer Cake and future fiancé Jude Law in the Alfie remake.
“I think certain British tabloids were very supportive,” she recalls diplomatically, “[while] others could be extremely slanderous. But I appreciate the fact that if you’re in a high-profile relationship, you can’t complain about it too much. I don’t want to sound like I’m wounded, but I had to try to accept it with grace and dignity. They provoke you to try and upset you to get a photo of you crying. I found myself in situations where I was running down the street with [paparazzi] chasing me in the dark. That should not be allowed.”
Asked to explain the public’s ongoing fascination with her, Miller responds with a girlish laugh. “I wish I knew! I have no idea. I find my life incredibly boring at times.
I don’t do anything particularly exciting. I cook. I walk my dogs. I don’t go to openings, or every celebrity party. I very much lead a normal life. I don’t court that attention. I never did this to be a celebrity or to be famous,” she insists. “That may sound like something you have to say, but I genuinely mean it, which is why I did that play for five months.”
The play she’s referring to – her West End debut playing Celia in a stage production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at Wyndham’s Theatre – was one step towards her goal of being taken seriously as an actress. Another step was starring opposite the late Heath Ledger in director Lasse Hallström’s Casanova. It was that role that finally made casting directors sit up and take notice.
Previously relegated to supporting status, Miller soon found herself being offered leading roles. First came the plum part of Andy Warhol’s folksinger muse, Edie Sedgwick, in the 2006 film, Factory Girl. Then indie icon-turned-writer/director Steve Buscemi cast her as America’s most popular soap actress in his 2007 festival hit, Interview. By the time she was cast opposite Claire Danes, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in the critically acclaimed fantasy Stardust, Sienna Miller had begun to reveal herself as a dedicated thespian committed to her craft.
And that’s precisely what she’s doing over the course of this year. In The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, she plays a smart, sexy violinist who steals the lead character’s heart. In Hippie Hippie Shake, which documents counter-culturalist Richard Neville’s bawdy adventures in London during the swinging ’60s, she stars opposite Cillian Murphy and Max Minghella (and, as you may have heard, sheds her clothes). In a big screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play, A Woman of No Importance, she’ll play Hester Worsley, whose past comes back to haunt her when the man who left her with child becomes the potential employer of their illegitimate son.
The fashion icon is also excited about her new clothing line, 2812, which is named after her birthday. “It’s a small label I set up with my sister, who designed for Alexander McQueen for two years,” Miller told Time Out New York last summer. “She went to Saint Martins, which is probably the best design college in the world. I think celebrities do clothing lines as a fast track to making money but it’s not one of those ‘queues-around-the-block, let’s-create-press-mayhem’ things.”
Clearly, at the age of 26, Sienna Miller is just hitting her stride, and confesses that she is indeed having the time of her life. “There were times a few years ago when I asked myself if it was worth it, but actually things seem to have died down [where the tabloids and paparazzi are concerned]. I’m so relieved to be able to come and talk about films I’m proud of and not everything else,” she acknowledges with a relieved smile. “I love my job, but as for the exterior stuff that goes along with it, I don’t think anyone could have predicted for themselves that it would happen.” Actually, we could.
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