Lily attended the ‘Cinderella’ premiere in London last night (March 19) with some of her co-stars and director Kenneth Branagh. She wore a custom Balenciaga shimmering silver gown inspired by the Pre-Fall 2015 collection. I have updated the gallery with high quality pictures of Lily. Head over to the gallery and check them out!
Big thanks to Helen and AliKat for their help.
Public Appearances > 2015 > ‘Cinderella’ London Premiere
LOOK – From Downton Abbey’s Lady Rose to playing Disney’s most famous princess Cinderella, we sat down with the lovely Lily James, 25, to discuss what it was really like wearing those glass slippers…
Was it tough playing such a nice, virtuous character like Cinderella?
People say it’s more interesting to play bad characters because you can examine their motives. So with someone so good I had to do so much work because it had to be justified. Once I figured out her back story and how she engages with the world, it actually became quite easy.What was it like working with your Prince Charming, former Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden?
He’s such a nice guy. It sounds pathetic but he’s a really nice guy. It was funny because [during filming] he had was clean-shaven without a Scottish accent and then on Sunday [his day off] he transformed with a Scottish accent.This is your biggest project to date, do more people recognise you in the street now?
It’s still the same [level of recognition] but it’s just amazing that these kids want to see my stroke my dress or see my slippers. The glass heels were actually Swarovski crystal but they didn’t actually fit my foot. They had to use CGI on otherwise they would have broken.
I have added pictures of Lily and her stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray, photographed for The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 25 Stylists of 2015. The photoshoot is stunning!
Studio Photoshoots > Outtakes & Sessions > Session 055
TEEN VOGUE – “Growing up, I was always prancing around and singing…and I just never really stopped,” remembers Lily James. The 25-year-old stars in Disney’s live-action remake of Cinderella, the same beloved classic that kept her spellbound as a child. “I got completely carried away in the magic,” she explains. “The romance, the beauty, the music, the anything-is-possible feeling. It’s so special.”
The actress (and her charming British accent) has also graced Downton Abbey in the role of Lady Rose MacClare, but don’t let her delicate English-rose appearance fool you. Lily is a bit of a thrill-seekershe requested to perform her own horseback-riding stunts for Cinderella! That adrenaline-seeking attitude lends itself nicely to her upcoming role in the much-anticipated Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. “Elizabeth Bennet is this badass zombie slayer in Hertfordshire, wielding a sword and dispensing of the unmentionables,” Lily says with a laugh. (A slightly different tune from a glass slipperwearing princess, to be sure.)
But Lily’s already on the prowl for her next challenge: “I want to do more theater, which allows you to take bigger risks and experiment.” She may be having a Cinderella moment, but her promising career is just getting started.
MINDFOOD – Lily James opens up about Cinderella, being a girly girl and whether she really had to starve herself for that corset…
Downton Abbey’s Lily James, 25, better known as Downton Abbey’s Lady Rose MacClare, a much welcome addition who joined the cast in 2012, stars in the titular role in the live action adaptation of Cinderella. This impressive cast, directed by Kenneth Branagh, includes Cate Blanchett as the wicked step-mother, Sophie McShera, fellow Downton cast member who plays Daisy the kitchen maid as one of the evil step-sisters, and Holliday Grainger from The Borgias plays her equally vile sibling. The handsome Prince Charming is played by Scottish actor, Richard Madden, known for his role as Robb Stark from Game of Thrones.
Sophie McShera (Daisy) must have enjoyed the role reversal having you in the kitchen cooking and cleaning for her while she was upstairs lounging about in fancy gowns?
Oh, she loved getting to boss me about but I actually feel that I came out on top in the end because I had that moment when I was tightening her corset so I was able to be a bit cruel back (laughs)How has Downton changed your life?
I think it’s changed everything but not in ways people expect, like in terms of lifestyle, but it’s changed my life in that I wouldn’t have got Cinderella if it hadn’t been for Downton.Cinderella is the ultimate of girly-girl roles. What were you like growing up?
Yeah, I was a girly-girl. I had fake plastic glass slippers that I wore about the house but I wasn’t allowed to wear them up the stairs because my mum was afraid that I’d break my neck. But I have two brothers – one older and one younger – so they kept me not too princessy. That was my saving grace. They knocked me off my pretend princess pedestal.
D23 – The clock is nearly ready to strike for the debut of the cinematic ball we’ve been waiting for—the release of Disney’s Cinderella, which opens in theaters this Friday, March 13. D23 had the opportunity to speak with the film’s stars, Lily James and Richard Madden, as well as director Kenneth Branagh, and hear what they had to say about re-imagining Disney’s 1950 animated classic and re-introducing this timeless tale to a 21st-century audience.
On Lily James (Cinderella):
Director Kenneth Branagh: “So what we needed from Cinderella was always the same, and it was, you know, generosity of spirit and a kind of lightness of touch… a lovely voice, a kind of sense of fun in the absurd and everything—and she has all of that. It was a lovely phone call to make.”On Cinderella… and her Prince:
Branagh: “I think she sees the world in slightly poetic terms, you know, as we say, she likes to try and see the world as it could be—not necessarily as it is, which is a line from Cervantes from Don Quixote, where he’s tilting at windmills and they talk about madness. The full line is, ‘Who knows where madness lies? Perhaps in too much sanity is madness, but perhaps madness of all to see the world as it is, and not as it could be.’ I’m pro-dreamers, and, you know, Don Quixote was a dreamer tilting at windmills. Cinderella, he might argue, she’s a bit of a dreamer—but she’s a beautiful dreamer.”Actor Richard Madden: “Some see him as a soldier, and [some see] him as a friend, and all these different elements pull into him to kind of make him. I really think it’s important, especially with Cinderella, to have created a character that’s worthy of her affections. But I think that slightly outdated, old-fashioned view of a woman with a terrible life who needs a man to come and rescue her from that doesn’t work any more. That’s not actually a great message to be passing on to children. It’s totally different to that. You’ve got a young man and a young woman and they’re bringing out the best in each other, and that’s kind of much more relevant message.”
THE INDEPENDENT – Let’s get the storybook analogies out of the way now. British actress Lily James, already a star of Downton Abbey, must have her very own fairy godmother, sprinkling magic dust on her career. This month, she takes the lead in Kenneth Branagh’s sumptuous new live-action version of Cinderella, before playing centre stage in a slew of other high-profile projects – from the anticipated zom-com Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to a more traditional BBC adaptation of War and Peace.
We’re sitting in a glitzy Berlin hotel, with the 25-year-old James about to embark on a world press tour for Cinderella. Russia, Italy, America, Mexico and Canada await her, though she’s well aware “that lasts for a little time-frame and then it’s gone”. Then it’s back to her flat in Peckham; a south-east London equivalent, maybe, of the clock striking midnight and her carriage turning back to a pumpkin. OK, enough with the fairy tales.
James, wearing black flats and a long-sleeved Lanvin dress, can’t quite believe what’s happened to her. Just five years ago, she was graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. There were roles on stage, including Desdemona in a production of Othello at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre opposite Dominic West, and on film in the 2012 sporty feel-good flick Fast Girls, before she arrived in the final episode of series three of Downton, as the oh-so-naughty Lady Rose.
She’s been in every season since – and is hoping to return for the sixth series this year, depending on schedules and creator Julian Fellowes’ “imagination”. But she maintains that her everyday existence didn’t change after winning the role. “[With] Downton… people have this idea that your life is so different, and it’s just not,” she says. “I think people really think it does and I don’t know whether they want to believe it does, or whether they want to assume that you’ve changed.”
On one level, that’s hard to believe. James is currently dating Matt Smith, the former Doctor Who star whom she worked with on the upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But then James says she doesn’t “get stopped or hassled” in the street.
