Hayley Atwell: Boyd meets Girl

Hayley Atwell is listing the craziest things she’s done in the name of her art, starting with a drive down a ravine in heels, and moving on to shark diving — ‘I have a real fear of the sea and sharks, but Ruth Wilson [the actress] was doing it and asked if I was scared, so of course I went right in’ — and then, she ticks her mental list, there was walking on fire. When was that? ‘Oh, when I was nine…’ At which point it’s clear that this is no ordinary starlet.

She’s full of energy and charm when we meet, despite it being a drizzly Sunday morning. She’s cracking one-liners and letting slip tiny items of gossip until it feels like we’re watching a recording of Miranda. As soon as the photographer issues an instruction, however, she transforms in a blink from wry comic to sensual debutante, sultry provocateur or haughty ice maiden.

‘My dad was a photographer for 30 years, so I got very comfortable,’ she explains later as we lunch in an exotically draped Moroccan-style booth in the bar of The Gore hotel. ‘If you have the man that you trust and love the most in the world taking your picture, it feels like a nice thing, a positive thing. And sometimes when I think, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing,” or if I’m not having much contact with a photographer, I’ll think of him and I’ll relax a little.’

This relaxed air could be why the 30-year-old Londoner hasn’t stopped working since graduating from Guildhall seven years ago, from playing Julia Flyte in Julian Jarrold’s 2008 film version of Brideshead Revisited, to Bess Foster, who introduces Keira Knightley to the joys of Sapphic love in The Duchess, and Freya, the love of Logan Mountstuart’s life, in Any Human Heart. Taking a break from frocks and bonnets, she’s also played Peggy Carter, Chris Evans’ feisty love interest, in Captain America.

This year she’s co-starring with Charlotte Rampling in I, Anna, an atmospheric noir thriller in which she plays Rampling’s daughter. She’s also taking the lead in Restless, William Boyd’s epic thriller, with, coincidentally, Rampling playing the present-day version of Atwell’s Second World War spy. Another Boyd adaptation? ‘Yeah, I’m William Boyd’s muse,’ she jokes. ‘Actually, he’s writing another Bond novel. I don’t know whether it’ll become a film but hopefully…’ She doesn’t seem the type to play a sexy sidekick. ‘I’m not a Bond Girl at all,’ she laughs. ‘I’m talking about the lead. I want to play Bond.’ Her white-knuckle stunts as the rookie spy Eva in Restless suggest she has the balls for the part. ‘The killing is really graphic, they do a good job of it,’ she says. ‘I’m pushing cars down ravines, jumping out of bathroom windows and running away from Nazis. I loved doing the stunt driving. Action and props and stunts — bring them on.’

She seems full of confidence, but it’s been hard-earned. ‘I had horrid experiences early on of freezing — I could get the words out but was completely dead inside,’ she explains. ‘Most of my early work I was absolutely terrified. The Line of Beauty was OK, a bit of naughty fun. But anything else… The Duchess, everyone was saying it was fantastic, but I was thinking, “I’m dead, I’m so depressed.” I was scared of being found out. I thought that if anyone knew that I didn’t know what I was doing then I just wasn’t going to have a future.’

Perhaps it was the vicissitudes of her upbringing that made her feel like an imposter. She is the only child of motivational speakers who met at a London self-help workshop. Her father, who looks a bit like Tom Selleck, is a part Native American photographer turned shaman. Her mother was a council estate kid who became a therapist. By the time Hayley was two, they had separated and her father had returned to the US, leaving Hayley and her mother in Ladbroke Grove.

‘I went to quite a rough school and wasn’t one of the cool kids — a bit overweight, sensitive and introverted with a vivid imagination. I felt very out of place with kids my own age,’ she explains. ‘This guy from my primary school found me on Facebook recently and went, “F***ing hell, you’re a dark horse, ain’t you?” I remember once the kids at school really hurting me and I came back and told one of my mum’s friends who said,’ — she puts on a ‘therapy speak’ voice — ‘ “No one has the power to hurt you unless you give them that power.” I remember thinking, “So you’re saying if someone’s mean and I’m hurt, it’s my fault? I’m only seven.” A hug would have done.’

Today Hayley can laugh at the oddities of her bohemian upbringing: ‘They weren’t drug-smoking hippies, but they were into Deepak Chopra and lots of 1970s motivational stuff.’ She remembers a group of people babysitting her and watching a noisy Sex Pistols documentary, so she clambered out of bed and went down to join them. ‘It was quite gratuitous for an eight-year-old. At one point they got a bit alarmed and asked where my mother was — and this was when I discovered irony: she was at a workshop called It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood.’

As a result of all this chaos, Hayley has joint UK and US citizenship and an amazing ability to connect with people, whatever their background. ‘When I was with my mother’s friends, I could talk about Descartes. When I was with my father, I could do the New Age thing. When I was with my posh friends, I could be posh. When I was with my rougher friends, I could be street.’ On the downside it took her a while to get comfortable with herself and she ended up relying on men a little too much. When she was dating Skins writer Gabriel Bisset-Smith, she described him as the anchor in her life because he didn’t take what she did that seriously. She’s currently dating Paul Wilson — Snow Patrol’s bass player — and says she’s very happy but very independent, and they’re not planning a family any time soon.

‘I’m reading Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook at the moment and there’s a partic-ular character whose sense of identity is wrapped up in the desire to please a man and be defined by what he likes in her,’ she explains. ‘I went out with an actor [she won’t give a name] who was alpha in every aspect of the word apart from when it came to career. When I started doing well, he got so threatened and jealous. I’ve tried to lessen myself in order to make men feel stronger and it never works, because it’s bullshit anyway. The thing about this industry is that your life can change overnight so it can throw relationships unless they’re strong.’

She’s keen to point out that her life hasn’t changed overnight. ‘I had to rush out to buy this outfit from Whistles because I’ve just been filming in Dublin and when I flew in all I had was an egg-stained T-shirt and trainers.’ For a moment it sounds unconvincing. Captain America 2 is about to go into pre-production and it looks like she’ll be back as Peggy Carter. That’s a second Hollywood blockbuster following her primetime TV leading roles, but she’s having none of it. ‘Don’t be fooled,’ she shrugs. ‘Actors can fall into the trap of thinking that everyone knows them, but the reality is that I’ve been on set for the past three weeks, I’m in every single shot and the guy who drives me to work still thinks my name is Amanda.’

Restless is on BBC One on 27 and 28 December at 9pm

Photographs by Helen McArdle

Styled by Nathalie Riddle

Stylist’s assistant: Basma Khalifa

Hair by Lisa Eastwood at Premier Hair and Make-up using Shu Uemura Art of Hair

Make-up by Liz Pugh at Premier Hair and Make-up using Chanel Christmas 2012 and Rouge Allure 2012