Lily James Keeps Proving She's Hollywood's Ultimate Chameleon

Lily James is a busy woman. Our call is rescheduled twice, including once on a Sunday, because she's just flown out for a shoot in a different time zone. When she finally greets me on Zoom from a hotel suite in Vancouver—fresh-faced and makeup-free after a morning workout—she is brimming with apologies, and all is instantly forgotten. "Thank you for being so patient," she says, clasping her hands together in contrition. "It's been really wild over here."

Who can blame her for the packed schedule? James is the epitome of a modern-day workhorse. The SAG Award winning actor has been working in Hollywood for over a decade and a half, and she's only 36. The British star has built a chameleonic filmography that most actors would happily sacrifice an arm and a leg to achieve. There's musical gold—who can forget her winsome turn as the all-singing, all-dancing young Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia 2? She's done achingly cool A24 fare, courtesy of the savage wrestling saga The Iron Claw, and ticked off nail-biting heist action in the form of Edgar Wright's surprise box-office smash Baby Driver. She's been Pamela Anderson for Pam Tommy—for which she donned extensive prosthetics and was subsequently nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe. She's played Cinderella, zombie-slaying Elizabeth Bennet, and Winston Churchill's secretary (not in the same movie, obviously). Look close enough and you can spot James's moon-pale face and enormous brown eyes featuring in every single movie genre in existence. James doesn't just have range—she's got a veritable mountain of it.

"I do find acting kind of addictive," she admits today, pushing her newly dyed black hair behind her ears. "I feel lucky to do this job because you take on a role and go, 'God, I don't know where I am in that,' then you find it, and you've completely stretched the boundaries of what you think you're capable of." She's on a rest day (sort of) from shooting her latest film Harmonia, an '80s thriller that revolves around a mysterious all-female cult/commune. James, alongside The White Lotus breakout favorite Carrie Coon, plays a dazzling spiritual leader—hence the siren-esque raven hair and chunky moonstone necklace peeking out from her blue-and-white Hunza G shirt. It's all in service to her character, though she's no stranger to brunette hair. She last dyed it black and bleached her brows for a Versace campaign in 2023. ("Anything Donatella asks me, I would say yes!")

"I'm wearing a lot of crystals at the moment," James says as she pulls a beginner's guide to crystals off her desk. "I have some crystal tarot cards that I've been asking really important questions to. My agent's like, 'You can't answer questions based on crystal tarot cards that you don't even know how to use yet!'"

Right now, though, she is here to talk about another project—three, in fact. The 36-year-old British actress is pulling a hat trick this year. First on the slate is Finally Dawn, a fizzy Fellini-esque Italian period drama in which she stars as a malcontented movie star, which is set to premiere a few days after we speak. Next is Relay, a phenomenally sleek corporate thriller from the English director David Mackenzie. (I've been sent a top-secret screening link, and let me tell you—you're a smarter person than I am if you spot its mic-drop twist.) Finally, there's Swiped, the long-awaited Whitney Wolfe Herd biopic, in which James takes on the role of the Bumble founder and Tinder cofounder who took her former company to court for sexual harassment.

Phew, I'm exhausted just running through that list, so I can only imagine what it's been like for James. "I honestly feel quite schizophrenic talking about all these projects," she says earnestly. Finally Dawn (its original title is Finalmente l'alba, which she pronounces in flawless Italian) has impeccable European auteur pedigree in the form of director Saverio Costanzo, who is better known for showrunning the award-garlanded TV adaption of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. Finally Dawn was actually shot years ago, and its release was delayed by the SAG-AFTRA strikes, James explains. "I'm so excited it's finally coming out and people will get to see it," she adds, clearly pleased as punch. "It's shot on film, and it's just utterly stunning."

Relay was a different proposition altogether. The Manhattan-set nail-biter features James as a whistleblower scientist who seeks help from a solitary fixer played by Riz Ahmed, who is also British. I ask jokingly, Did the two ever talk about stealing American jobs? James bursts into laughter. "I stay in my American accent when I'm on set just because I find it a bit harder to slip in and out," she admits. Around a fellow Brit, though, "it's slightly more embarrassing to be speaking in an American accent."

But it's Swiped that has the virtue of being closest to James's heart, partly because she also has a producing credit on the film. "It felt quite like an organic moment," she says of coming on board behind the scenes. It's one of the first films from Parodos Productions, the production company she started with her close friend and fellow actor Gala Gordon during the strikes. "Our remit is to find those stories that really champion women's stories, women with great grit and tenacity who have gone on to achieve things," James tells me. The story of Wolfe Herd certainly possesses twists and turns that seem genetically engineered for a big-screen adaptation. The former Utah sorority member helped build Tinder from day one, only to sue and win a rumored $1 million settlement in the process. In the midst of relentless tech-bro trolling as a result of the lawsuit, she went on to found Bumble and became the youngest female self-made billionaire on the planet when she took the company public in 2021.

"It felt kismet, beginning my own production company whilst playing such a phenomenal entrepreneur [who was] unafraid of breaking boundaries and pushing forward," James tells me. "I felt very empowered playing Whitney at this moment in my life."

These days, the phrase "born for the stage" is tossed around with wild abandon, but James is one of the few who seem to actually merit the description. She comes from exemplary acting stock. Her grandmother Helen Horton was a glamorous mainstay of British television and theater and even provided the voice of the computer in Ridley Scott's Alien. James fondly recalls a gold cape—"strappy, quite adult!"—that Horton made for her, which a 5-year-old James theatrically slunk around in while performing songs for her family. There is, she informs me with obvious horror, even a tape of it somewhere. "Is it nature, or is it learned behavior? I don't know, but there was something in me that liked to perform," she says.

Her dad, James Thomson, also acted when he was younger. "My father was really highly imaginative and always telling stories," she says. There must have been a lot of family opinions on offer once James decided to pursue acting as an adult. "I've had advice my whole life," she emphasizes. Sadly, both her grandmother and father passed away before she finished her first year at drama school. "I do feel really sad that they were such huge inspirations for me in terms of doing this job," she says reflectively. "And neither of them were able to see me in it." When she discovered that another actress had the name Lily Thomson, James took on her father's name in his honor.

After graduating from Guildhall School of Music and Drama, James got her big break in Downton Abbey, playing the free-spirit aristocrat Lady Rose. When it aired on PBS in America, it became the most watched TV show in its history. Even today, thousands of tourists flock to Highclere Castle. Then came her role as the titular pure-hearted princess of the live-action Cinderella, one of the few Disney remakes that was both box-office gold (it grossed $543 million) and critically acclaimed. That was the making of James in America and proof that the actor wasn't just an English rose destined for a lifetime of corset-bound romances. In fact, Downton creator Julian Fellowes regards her as the "greatest success story from the cast of the show." When fans complained about the lack of Lady Rose in the Downton Abbey film, executive producer Gareth Neame mischievously told Entertainment Weekly, "She can't be [in it]; she's in every other film at the world at the moment," and that was all the way back in 2018.

"It's not my first rodeo!" James laughs of her decade-plus in film and TV. "I do feel a great confidence and strength in that." What accounts for her ferocious work ethic? "I think I was more hungry to succeed and to keep growing. I feel like I'm a little less ambitious [now] but in a healthy way, a more grounded way," she explains. She recently celebrated entering her mid-30s with an intimate meal tucked away in the London courtyard of the Michelin-starred restaurant Luca surrounded by longtime friends, including Gordon, Poppy Delevingne, and actors Gemma Chan and Mamma Mia! costar Dominic Cooper.

Everyone talks about the switch from your 20s to your 30s, I muse, but turning 35 and up is the real headfuck. How does she feel about that transition? "I sometimes read stuff where women are all, 'In my 30s, I suddenly didn't give a fuck, and I had it all figured out.' I'm like, 'Really?'" she says, growing serious. "I think the biggest change has been realizing that life is finite. I only want to do stuff that I really care about. I want to spend time with the people I love. I want to make the most of this wild and crazy life, so I only want to work on stuff that I really love. That's changed."

It's impossible not to ask (she is playing a dating-app founder in Swiped, after all) if James is single, but she won't be drawn on it. "I would never tell," she says with an enigmatic smile, though the gossip mill went into overdrive when she was spotted giggling and carousing with Anyone But You star Glen Powell at a pre-BAFTAs party earlier this year. Is she on Bumble or Tinder? "I've never been on a dating app, personally," she says. "However, in research for the character, I went on my friend's Bumble account just to get a sense of the app that I'm pretending I created." Still, she's surrounded by dating-app stories in her personal and professional life. "One of our producers, Jen Gibgot, met her partner on Bumble. My best friend met her husband on Bumble. You start talking and you realize, like, how many matches, how many babies. That's the profound effect that these dating apps—Bumble in particular—have had. It's wild," she says.

Surely, she must be the only 30-something woman in existence who's never been on a dating app, I proclaim. "I was always in relationships when the apps started," James explains. "Now, I just don't know. I feel a bit self-conscious. … I try to stay really private, as private as I can. To be on a dating app feels a bit counterintuitive to that desire."

For all of her openness and buoyant charm, there is something about James that reminds me of a swan placidly steering through water, furiously paddling underneath the surface. She describes her internal rhythm as "pretty frantic" by nature. "I live in polar opposites sometimes and in extremes," she says. "A lot of that is born out of what I do. I'm always in a different place, in a different country, in a different city. Sometimes, I can feel quite unrooted." The last few years, she suggests, have been about charting a course back to her true self, an "authentic rhythm" that is "pretty slow and steady." On her birthday, she posted an Instagram screenshot of her horoscope for the day: "Be an active participant in your life. Believe in change. … Believe in new beginnings. Believe in fresh starts."

One of those fresh starts may involve music. James can sing (anybody who's seen her belt out "Knowing Me, Knowing You" in Mamma Mia 2 can attest to that) but had previously maintained that she never wanted to release music under her own name. "Now, I feel like I would totally if I started writing songs or found a songwriter to write with," she says. To the delight of Disney fans, she recently sang "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" with L.A. singer-songwriter Ben Abraham on his Instagram page. "His album Friendly Fire is just so beautiful, so I thought, 'Oh, I'll slide into his DMs and say, "Great album!"'" she recalls. "I just want to do stuff that makes me feel good. I wouldn't be so fearful of potential judgment or feeling like I'm an actor and I should stick to my lane."

If you want to get astrological about where James is currently at (she's an Aries, if that's of interest), well, your 30s are all about what happens once you make it past your dreaded Saturn return with all the hindsight and wisdom you bring with you into that third decade. James—always pushing, always searching for something more—is clearly charting onto an adventurous path. Not everyone essays a smooth course from playing a Disney princess to the cult leader of Harmonia, and not everyone is able to look back on their journey with the open-hearted equanimity that James brings. Earlier this year, she went back to being blonde and started to get recognized as Cinderella again, 10 years on. She ended up FaceTiming her friend's niece in full princess regalia with her hair done up, wearing an appropriately sky-blue top and brandishing one of the Jimmy Choo diamond-encrusted heels that the designer made for the film. "This little girl lit up," she remembers. "Then I said, 'Look, I'm going to put it on!' But I'd been dancing all night at Koko [a club in London], and my feet were swollen. I couldn't get the shoe on! I was like (she pulls a face of utmost concentration), 'Get your foot in, Lily!'" Obviously, it ended up working out. This is Lily James, after all.

Before we wave goodbye on Zoom (James still has lines to learn for the next day's shoot), I ask if there's anything that she wishes more people knew about her. "Oh, I hope this doesn't sound bad," she says. "I don't need people to know who I am beyond my work. … I think I can't define myself anymore, or at all, on what other people think I am. That's reserved for me, my friends and family, and my life that I'm building for myself." With that, Lily James logs off—the consummate chameleon, ready to take on another role of a lifetime.

Photographer: Noémi Ottilia Szabo
Stylist: Sofia Lazzari
Hairstylist: Fabio Petri at The Wall Group using Olaplex
Makeup Artist: Brooke Turnbull at The Wall Group
Manicurist: Simone Cummings at Arch the Agency using Bio Sculpture
Creative Director: Alexa Wiley
Special thanks to Rosewood London