Noomi Rapace's love letter to London

The actress pens an ode to the city that stole her heart

Dave Benett

15 August 2019

I moved to London seven years ago.

I came to London for the first time ever when I did Sherlock Holmes, and was working with Guy Ritchie, and Jude Law and Robert Downey Jnr. I was staying in Knightsbridge, in one of the hotels right by Hyde Park. Had never been to London, and was kind of coming out of a divorce.

I was 30, and I came here, and my heart was basically wide open, and I was in a place in myself where I needed to change. I’d just divorced and I wanted to find my new home, basically. It was between London, New York, Paris and LA. But when I came here I was basically like, ‘I fucking love this city.’ It was instant. I hardly spoke English, didn’t know anyone, but I was like, ‘This is it: I’m gonna be here.’

So from that point I started looking for a place to buy. The first place I was trying to buy was a big church in Battersea. Massive: it would have taken me probably five years to fix it up, and they just kept adding to the price, so I was like, ‘I can’t do it, it’s too expensive.’ Then I tried to buy a pub, in Shepherd’s Bush, but it was not enough space. And then I found this amazing blacksmiths, an old blacksmiths that I bought, that I live in now, in Kensal Rise. And I love it. When I moved here, I promised my son, ‘This is it: we’re staying here until we die.’

Lev is 15, turning 16. He’s cool. He’s like, ‘Mum, do you have any black earrings?’ I’m like yeah I have black Chanel. He’s like, ‘Can I borrow the black Chanel?’ We like the same kind of music, so he DJs when we do parties at home.

And he loves it here. I love it. We love it. I feel more at home in London than I ever did in any Swedish city. I’m not going anywhere. Everyone was like, ‘When are you moving to LA’, it’s like, ‘Never!’ I go there when I work. I had to be there last year for six months shooting a film, but when I was leaving, when I landed in London, I started crying. I’m not kidding! I get so emotional. I arrived yesterday from Iceland – I’m shooting a movie in Iceland – and I came through the clouds, and you don’t see anything, because it’s always so cloudy, right? And then right before you hit the ground, you see a little bit of London. And then I start crying. I get super-emotional.

London is a very tolerant city. This is a good example: last year, or Christmas, I’m not a big Christmas person, so I decided to have a lot of my friends coming to my house to eat and dance, and it was basically Muslims, Catholics, non-believers… it was a mix of all kinds of different people, and we were eating Jamaican food, and then at midnight they all went to mass, at a Christian church, and then later on a mosque. I stayed home, because I was home with my son and I didn’t want to out. But it was like 3am, and I was thinking, ‘This is London for me. All different cultures, and colours, and religions, all mixed.’ It’s very tolerant and open minded, and I love that.

I wish the UK was more like London.

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