1 of 5 | Lily James, seen at the 2023 Fashion Awards in London, stars in “Finally Dawn.” File Photo by Rune Hellestad/UPI | License Photo
LOS ANGELES, July 17 (UPI) — Lily James says she related to the themes of loneliness in her new film, Finally Dawn, in theaters Friday. James, 36, plays fictional 1950s Hollywood movie star Josephine Esperanto.
Josephine takes an Italian extra, Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci), under her wing on the set of a Roman epic, and brings her to an all-night afterparty. In a recent interview with UPI, James said Josephine is a cautionary tale for investing too much of one’s life in a persona.
“In Josephine Esperanto, I was exploring what that loneliness looks like,” James said. “I don’t think she knows who she is anymore and is lonely.”
Josephine does not open up with that kind of vulnerability to Mimosa, nor to her co-star (Joe Keery) or director (Willem Dafoe). James said that kind of loneliness is not limited to celebrities.
“That’s a human problem,” James said. “How do we find real happiness? How do we not be lonely? How do we find validation from within instead of without? So it’s quite profound.”
James said she too struggles with balancing her career with her private life. She had her first role in 2010 on the BBC series Just William.
Her other credits include playing Disney’s Cinderella, the musical Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, and portraying real-life celebrity Pamela Anderson in the FX series Pam & Tommy.
“I think part of loving what you do is a gift and a curse because it does consume me,” James said. “Especially in art, those boundaries become really blurred because you inhabit another character. You inhabit another world alongside these actors and it’s a magical world but it can really take over your life.”
One way James helped divide her career and real life was by taking a stage name. She took James as her professional name, after her father, Jamie Thompson.
In private, she is still Lily Thompson. James suspects Josephine Esperanto is a stage name too, though Josephine seemingly lives it full time.
“There’s sort of you and the actor version, kind of a healthy boundary there,” James said. “So I think stage names are kind of great.”
There is only one scene in Finally Dawn in which Josephine lets her guard down. Mimosa is not supposed to witness it, but she wanders in unbeknownst to Josephine.
“I think you see a woman at the end sort of undressing and unraveling, taking the armor of her life, this pretend character that she’s built up,” James said, adding that Josephine “realizes, ‘What is there left underneath? I haven’t nurtured it and I haven’t given it the time it deserves.’ There’s something deeply, deeply melancholic and Shakespearean about that.”
So too are her plans for Mimosa, who is just a local girl and did not ask to join in Hollywood debauchery.
“I think she wants to birth Mimosa into a star and destroy her right at the same time,” James said. “There’s cruelty and love, a maternal instinct and a kind of destruction.”
To capture the performance of a ’40s movies star, James studied real actors like Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Monica Vitti.
“I really just tried to enjoy watching their skill and elegance and beauty,” she said.
James recently wrapped filming Cliffhanger, a re-imagining of the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action hit. She co-stars with Pierce Brosnan under director Jaume Collet-Serra.
“I’m now obsessed with climbing, the athletic side of it, but also the meditative state you have to go into when you’re climbing,” she said. “I was in the Dolemites climbing for six weeks with a sort of skeleton crew scaling mountains. We had to shut down multiple times because of snowstorms. It was a very bonding experience.”
She also hopes to revisit her character in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver. Wright has confirmed he wrote a sequel, but James is supportive of the director’s forthcoming new film.
“I’ve seen a script,” she said of the Baby Driver sequel. “Mainly, I’m just so excited about Running Man with Glen [Powell]. That trailer is absolutely phenomenal. I was completely blown away by it so I’m so excited to see that.”
