THE TELEGRAPH – The day before we meet, Lily James went to a yoga class for the first time in many years.

‘I was lying on my back and they were like, “Do a crab,”’ says Lily. ‘And I was like, “Sure…”’ she mimes an awkward attempt at the pose, pushing her chest out, arms flailing hopelessly to the side. ‘And I suddenly realised that I can’t just… you know, I can’t do a crab any more!’

She used to do yoga regularly, but the habit fell by the wayside. Well, I say, you’ve been otherwise occupied. She nods. ‘I have.’

At 29, Lily already has the sort of CV many older actresses can only dream of. She landed her first role in the BBC adaptation of Just William straight after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama eight years ago. By 2015, Lily was playing the lead in Disney’s live-action retelling of Cinderella.

The next year, she was Natasha in the BBC’s critically acclaimed War and Peace. In 2017, she put on a faultless American accent to star as diner waitress Deborah in the Edgar Wright-directed Baby Driver, and took on the role of Winston Churchill’s secretary in Darkest Hour, the film that won Gary Oldman a Best Actor Oscar.

And now her latest role sees Lily back in 1940s tailoring, playing Juliet Ashton, a writer emotionally scarred by the Second World War, in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Adapted from the bestselling novel of the same title, it is directed by Mike Newell (of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame).

Lily’s 20s, she says, have been ‘mad. I’ve just been going and going and going.’ Along the way, she’s also had to contend with the endless interest in her relationship with the actor Matt Smith, 35, who she has been dating for four years, since they met on the set of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. There were rumours of a romance for months, but Lily stuck firmly to the ‘just good friends’ line until they finally made it public with a red-carpet appearance at the Cinderella premiere in February 2015.

(Read the rest of the entry at the source)

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