Category: Sienna Miller

Sienna Miller is currently promoting Kevin Costner’s Horizon, a Western saga where Sienna plays a rough-and-tumble pioneer woman. Costner really wanted Sienna for the role, she was his first choice and that worked – she was flattered, and she’s been singing Costner’s praises for months now. Sienna also recently welcomed her second child, another daughter, with her boyfriend Oli Green. Green is 14 years younger than Sienna. She still sounds bummed about that, but she also seems at peace with her life right now. She’s no longer the hunted paparazzi target and she’s no longer the callow party girl. She’s matured into an interesting actress and a mother of two. Some highlights from her Harper’s Bazaar UK interview:

Why she signed on to ‘Horizon’: “Kevin sent me the four scripts, and they were astounding, almost Tolstoyan in length and detail. They hooked me. Then he asked to Zoom, and I was thinking, ‘Be still my Nineties heart!’ because I had been obsessed with Kevin Costner growing up. He was my first love. So, we talked, and he was very complimentary. He told me the story of the film and got to know me a bit. At the end he said, ‘Sienna, I have one question for you: will you go West with me?’ I died. I said, ‘I would go to Mars and back with you, Kevin.’”

Her fortitude: “If there’s one thing I’ve gained from the life I’ve led it’s a sense of resilience, fortitude – which sounds like I’m complimenting myself, but that’s not how I mean it. It’s like being forged in fire. I would have loved to have not been forced into that resilience, but I have, and that’s a part of myself that I brought to [my Horizon character] Frances.”

Flying into NYC for the Met Gala: “We flew to New York on Sunday with our nanny and, on landing, she got deported. So it was a random scramble of trying to find a babysitter, and stressful because I’m breastfeeding. It was a bit of a trip.”

Falling for Jude Law & becoming an It Girl: “That happened very quickly. The other side of it. I was so happy in my life, but it was weird, surreal. At first it was like a game. And then, very quickly, it became insidious and difficult.”

As she lost her privacy, she partied: “I was probably drinking too much, medicating in all sorts of ways, because it was jarring and scary. I was desperate to have roles that were intense, to prove that I was more than a fashion plate or a girlfriend. I just wanted be taken seriously. But, really, there wasn’t much conscious decision-making. I had a decade-long case of the f–k-its. Which is kind of cool, I suppose, and intriguing, but maybe not conducive to getting your career going – ie, what I was meant to be doing.”

Welcoming her second daughter with Oli Green: “I’m in heaven. It’s been a cathartic, healing experience, which sounds woo-woo, but it’s grounded in a way that reflects the life that I want to be living,” she says. Miller also did not intend to fall in love with Green, whom she met at a Halloween party and who, at 27, is 14 years her junior. “I didn’t expect to take it seriously and then quite quickly, I fell in love. I wasn’t like, ‘I’m gonna get a younger boyfriend.’ It was more, ‘F–k! Why are you young? That’s so annoying.’” She was surprised, she says, by how soothing it is to be with a younger partner. “There is a difference in the way that generation of men respect women. It’s specific to him, he is very wise and well-adjusted, but I do believe it’s also that generation. They have grown up with a slightly more level playing field. I see it in his female friends as well as in the men.”

The dark side of the ‘90s: “I could talk myself into all sorts of shapes to make the men in the room feel comfortable. And God forbid that you offend a man’s ego by rejecting them. It was a slightly belittling time. It’s interesting, being older now, and having been raised in that moment, learning from people who are younger about how clear they are in their boundaries, having that self-assuredness and self-advocacy, having ‘no’ in the repertoire in a way that we just weren’t encouraged to have.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar UK]

I’ve said this before, but I think Sienna’s thing with Oli Green works so well because she never expected it to work at all. She had no expectations and she had arranged her life to the point where she was fine with being a single mom. She knows that she’ll be fine if this relationship ends, which changes her attitude, I think. She’s the mature one, she’s the one “leading” the relationship. I really feel her on the ‘90s stuff… while I look back at the ‘90s with rose-colored glasses, I’m often confronted by just how f–ked up and sexist everything was back then.

Cover courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar UK and photos courtesy of Avalon Red..

For more than a decade, Sienna Miller has maintained homes in New York and England. She seemingly lives in NYC most of the time, but she maintains a little cottage in the English countryside, in Buckinghamshire. Sienna decided to show off her cottage to Architectural Digest. Which I enjoy – I love it when AD showcases a quirky cottage rather than some all-white modernist space. Sienna’s place looks kitschy, cramped and lived-in. While I dislike the exterior, the interior is cute and feminine.

Sienna told AD that she fell in love with the run-down cottage when she first saw it more than a decade ago: “It was a time when there was a lot of press attention on me, and I wanted somewhere to escape. I bought the house on a whim—it offers a sanctuary. I also wanted somewhere where family and friends could gather. It has a nurturing feeling; it is a home with a heart.” She left it untouched for a long time too, and only undertook a complete renovation during the pandemic. She hired Gaby Dellal to do the top-to-bottom reno – you can read more about the renovation here, and how Dellal sourced tons of vintage stuff for the cottage.

I love her kitchen. Maybe I would change the paint color – it’s pink! – but otherwise, that’s a fantastic kitchen. Overall, I would have done fewer mirrors too – there’s no need for all of those mirrored surfaces in the kitchen, although I get why she put mirrors in some of the other rooms, to make the sometimes cramped spaces feel a bit bigger. Anyway, I do enjoy her aesthetic. I prefer a cramped/cozy space full of wood and color as opposed to the overly-popular empty white spaces.

Cover & IGs courtesy of Architectural Digest.

Sienna Miller covers the latest issue of Elle UK. She’s promoting Netflix’s Anatomy of a Scandal, based on Sarah Vaughan’s novel of the same name. She plays the wife of a British MP (played by Rupert Friend) and the MP is accused of raping a colleague. Sienna talks about her own “scandals,” somewhat selectively in this piece. Let me just say, I have sympathy for Sienna and I can’t imagine what it was like for her as the British tabloids were ripping her to shreds for years and spying on her and invading her privacy. She sued and she won, but she’s still bruised by all of it. That being said, her selective amnesia on her full-blown affair with a married man (Balthazar Getty) is something pretty notable. I would imagine Rosetta Getty has some thoughts about Sienna championing herself as a wronged woman. Some highlights from this Elle piece:

Her character in Anatomy of a Scandal: ‘It was familiar terrain, because I’ve experienced some of the things that she experienced. And the feelings were familiar. [But] her way of dealing with what’s thrown at her is the absolute antithesis of what my way is. And so, in a kind of twisted, tourism sense, I just wanted to see how it would feel to react differently. I know that sounds weird, because you’d think it would be deeply unpleasant to sit in that space.’

Her chaotic 20s: ‘It feels like somebody else’s existence. I can go and visit it and look at it, but it doesn’t feel like my life. I can’t quite believe that it all happened. And not to put it specifically on that one thing, but just the chaos of the entire decade is so far removed from my life now.’

Falling for Jude Law & becoming famous overnight: ‘I was just catapulted into a totally parallel universe while being in love [with Law]. There was a lot of magic at that time. At first, it was kind of comical, but very quickly it became insidious and, yeah, scary. And my boyfriend [at the time] had been experiencing it for years and felt, understandably, a lot of hostility towards that kind of attention. So my initial reaction was the same.’

Why she sued British tabloids: ‘I became so litigious, just to try and carve out an existence that I could manage. You’ve seen women implode as a result of that. You can’t hold onto sanity or grounding.’ And so, in 2008, Miller sued the worst-offending paparazzi agency for harassment and won an injunction against future breaches of her privacy. That same year, she sued (and reached an out-of-court settlement with) The Sun and the News of the World, also for invasion of privacy. She then settled with the Sunday tabloid in 2011 for damages related to phone hacking and testified – defiantly, honestly – about the impact on her life and relationships at the Leveson Inquiry later that same year.

She’s always been underestimated: ‘I don’t know what more I have to do. I feel like, from a young age, I’ve proven myself. Without sounding arrogant, because I’m riddled with insecurity and the lowest self-esteem – and that’s the truth, I’m not just saying it – but I think I’ve reached a point of nihilism, which I’m quite happy about. I don’t know whether that’s [because of] Covid, but I just don’t really care. I do just wish that people would be a bit more original in their thoughts.’

Turning 40: She had ‘pressure… [about] kids, and should I have more, and why haven’t I, and all of that, which is a really loud noise. Biology is incredibly cruel on women in that decade – that’s the headline, or it certainly was for me. Then I got to 40 and I froze some eggs. Having been really focused on the need to have another baby, I’m just like, if it happens, it happens. That kind of existential threat has dissipated.’

Taking on Rupert Murdoch’s media machine: ‘Making that decision to take on Murdoch[’s company] and succeeding… It was a really difficult choice to make,’ she says of her long road to something approaching justice. And the legal battles, though hard, were key to Miller starting to regain control over her life. ‘Once you start to challenge it legally, and have minor victories, it does feel like, to some degree, you’re reclaiming a narrative or part of yourself that was taken. And that becomes empowering. That feels good. It’s something I survived. It feels like the stakes were high at moments and so I’m proud of that. And I would love to not revisit it, but it’s a huge part of my life and story.’

[From Elle UK]

Again, I love that she fought the British media system and won, but I completely understand why even her victory feels bittersweet. News of the World was hacking into her phone regularly, they were accessing her medical records, they invaded every safe space she thought she had. It was chaotic and damaging and there’s no financial settlement which can make it better. As for playing “the wronged woman”… she did experience that when Jude cheated on her. Then she was the other woman a few years later.

Cover & IG courtesy of Elle UK.