I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth looking divine in a beautiful Oscar de la Renta dress while attending the Marvel premiere of “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3”.

Star quality: It’s that ineffable trait that makes an actor pop off the screen. When a performer has it, you become entirely absorbed by the characters they play, the scenes they seem to so effortlessly inhabit. Anyone who’s witnessed actor Elizabeth Debicki’s astonishing work as Diana, Princess of Wales in The Crown knows that the Australian actor has star quality in spades.

Taking over the role from Emma Corrin, Debicki brings a more mature Diana to the fifth season of creator Peter Morgan’s prestige drama, which unfolds during the early 1990s. It’s a period when Diana is attempting to chart a new and more independent course for her life, but every effort she makes to have her voice heard — whether cooperating on a covert biography or granting a candid interview to the unscrupulous Martin Bashir (Prasanna Puwanarajah) — only brings more intense scrutiny. The public spotlight is unrelenting.

Portraying one of the twentieth century’s most iconic women, Debicki understood that her performance would be carefully examined. “It’s an enormous amount of pressure as an actor,” she says, “because you don’t usually have to play [a role] that someone else has just played so excellently. Then, of course, there’s the responsibility that you feel to do this person’s legacy justice. They’re two quite different pressures, but they both work in tandem when you start doing this job. That was, at times, pretty overwhelming.”

Fortunately, Debicki isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. She came to The Crown after delivering a decade of impressive performances dating back to her breakthrough in 2013’s The Great Gatsby. Notable turns in television (The Night Manager) and film (Widows, Tenet) followed, showcasing her versatility and range. “You have to sift through what Diana’s become — because people need her to become a certain representation or symbol — to get to the real-life person,” says Debicki of how she began to practically approach the creative challenge that lay ahead of her.

Debicki shared with Queue her personal recollections of the former Princess of Wales, the experience of inhabiting Diana’s psyche for so long, and how one well-timed glass of champagne helped launch her career.

Krista Smith: I first saw you in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, playing Jordan Baker, the incredibly chic professional golfer. Your co-stars were Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire, and you were the discovery in that film.
Elizabeth Debicki: I was out of drama school for, I think, two months when I got to do a screen test for Gatsby. I was in Melbourne where I’d just finished school. I went to [an] almost religiously theater-based training school. The methodology was very physical, lots of clowning, lots of Shakespeare and Chekhov. We were told very clearly, “You are lucky if you get a job, period, and it will only be in theater,” which is what I was aspiring to at the time. So, I didn’t know how to do a screen test. I went in there, and I was nervous as hell. There was a camera and a lovely reader who read very, very quickly, which made me drop my lines. I mean, I felt like I did it 12 times. I probably did it four times. Somehow, that [audition] tape magically found its way into Baz’s [hands]. I honestly don’t even know how you get Baz to sit down, so it was incredible that he sat and watched it. And then they flew me to L.A., and I did a screen test with Tobey at the Chateau [Marmont], which was one of the strangest and most memorable experiences of my life.

I’d never been to L.A. before. Tobey and I read the scene, Baz is filming us, and my hair’s in this fake little bob. We staged the whole thing. We go around the table, and we sit on the couch. He’s just following us like a puppy dog with this camera. Then we go to the bedroom and there’s another scene. I’m lounging around on the bed, and I’m just talking the whole time. I have no idea what accent I was doing. It went for about an hour and a half. The entire time I thought, I literally have nothing to lose. It was an incredibly freeing thing because I thought, I’m probably never going to see these people ever again. I went downstairs, and I remember thinking, We’ve got two hours or something until I have to leave for the airport. I’ll have a glass of champagne in the sunshine. I think I was 20 at the time. Is that legal? [More at Source]

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth attending the 25th Costume Designers Guild Awards.

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth attending the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth attending the Christian Dior show in Paris Fashion Week.

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth attending the 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

 

Une stature inhabituelle : 1,90 m, soit bien plus que Geena Davis, Sigourney Weaver ou Nicole Kidman, réputées être les plus grandes actrices de Hollywood. Une taille qui fait sa singularité et en impose. Une taille qui, avant qu’elle ne devienne une force, fut d’abord une malchance pour Elizabeth Debicki : trop grande pour tout, surtout pour devenir ballerine, son rêve d’enfant et le métier de ses deux parents, danseurs classiques. Tout cela est derrière elle quand on la rencontre à Paris, où elle est née il y a trente-deux ans, par hasard, au gré des pérégrinations familiales.

La voilà chez Dior, dont elle est ambassadrice joaillerie. De grands yeux clairs de chat mélancolique, un sourire énigmatique, qui trahit peut-être une lucidité amusée sur le monde qui l’entoure, un port d’altesse, des jambes longues comme un soir de Noël à Balmoral : telle est cette comédienne cosmopolite, de nationalité australienne, découverte en 2013 dans Gatsby le Magnifique, de Baz Luhrmann, aux côtés de Leonardo DiCaprio, puis vue notamment dans Tenet, de Christopher Nolan. Qui d’autre qu’elle pouvait incarner le rôle de Lady Diana dans la cinquième saison de la série à succès The Crown, diffusée depuis novembre sur Netflix. Rôle qu’elle a déjà retrouvé pour la sixième et dernière saison, dont le tournage vient de s’achever.

Après Naomi Watts (Diana, d’Oliver Hirschbiegel), Emma Corrin (The Crown, saison 4) Kristen Stewart (Spencer, de Pablo Larraín), Elizabeth Debicki est entrée dans la liste VIP des actrices qui ont eu le privilège d’évoquer la cultissime princesse de Galles. Pour Debicki, c’est durant les six dernières années de sa vie, entre 1991 et 1997, les années les plus tumultueuses de son existence et les plus périlleuses qu’ait connues la monarchie anglaise, avec l’incendie du château de Windsor, le divorce des enfants d’Élisabeth II, le Camillagate, les règlements de compte par interviews interposées entre Charles et Diana, la biographie explosive d’Andrew Morton et le divorce du couple princier. Six années capitales, selon Peter Morgan, l’auteur de la série, durant lesquelles la jeune princesse perdue se transforme en altesse combattante qui prépare son évasion.

À cette époque, certains ont stigmatisé Lady Diana, la jugeant déséquilibrée, fragile, superficielle, enfant gâtée… Alors, pour ces raisons, elle s’est défendue vaillamment, a utilisé les médias pour se faire entendre, dire sa vérité de femme, de femme malheureuse, trompée et sous-estimée. «En cela, je la trouve très moderne, très féministe, avance Elizabeth Debicki. Elle a participé à l’émancipation des femmes en difficulté, qui, grâce à elle, ont osé s’exprimer sans crainte.» Telle est la vision de la princesse de Galles que l’actrice a choisi de montrer. «Non pas une princesse rebelle ou capricieuse, ajoute-t-elle, mais une princesse révolutionnaire, celle qui a été la première à briser les tabous en rompant le silence de mise à la Cour.» [More at Source]

I’ve updated the gallery with over 200 photos of Elizabeth attending the 2022 Fashion Awards where she presented the Outstanding Achievement Award to Charles Conn.

It’s a Friday morning in Spain when Elizabeth Debicki Zooms in from the Mallorca set of The Crown, where the Australian actor is currently filming season six as Diana, Princess of Wales. “I’m in a little flat with a very interesting clock on the wall,” she deadpans, referring to her basic holiday rental that’s dwarfed by a frameless timepiece, comprised of numerals painted directly onto the white wall over her shoulder. “The first time I came here was doing The Night Manager, which I was horrified to count backwards and realise was seven years ago,” the 32-year-old continues, blue eyes sparkling behind oversized tortoiseshell frames. Lifting a wine glass, she adds, “This is a protein shake, in a wine glass, because we’re out of normal glasses. Please don’t judge.”

Right now, life for Debicki is somewhat topsy-turvy and time is clearly on her mind. “It’s such a strange experiment, you come to beautiful places that people only come to have a lovely vacation, and you work really hard and funny hours. The first week you’re like, ‘I can have a nice lunch and do my work. I’m totally capable.’ Then after the third week, you’re like this nocturnal animal. You’re so tired and you see people having dinner under your building and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. Restaurant.’ It’s such a weird experience.”

Production on season six is now back into overdrive after a respectful pause for the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. “We had just gotten to Barcelona, and I think we’d shot a day,” she recalls. “Of course, we paused, which was the right thing to do. It was very surreal, very sad and very sobering for everybody. I suddenly felt very homesick,” she shares, referring to her parents, and younger brother and sister, back in Melbourne. “I could tell it was really hard for people to be away from their families,” she continues, explaining that 95 per cent of The Crown’s crew are English. “Grief, as we all know, sneaks up in the oddest of ways. All the crew and cast stayed in the same hotel, and everyone just kept passing each other. It’s strange being on location because it’s liminal space where you don’t have to do your laundry, but you’re not at work and you don’t know what to do. I spent a lot of time watching that queue,” she says of the line to visit the monarch Lying-in-State, which was 10 miles long and a 24-hour wait at its peak. “It was just the perfect snapshot of what English people are and [are] capable of. It was very moving.”

After years commuting between Sydney and London in her 20s for many a film set and to tread the boards at Britain’s National Theatre, Debicki, who was born in Paris but raised in Melbourne, has been based in North London since 2018. “I miss them really a lot all the time,” she says of her close-knit family. Her parents, both professional dancers, ignited her passion for the arts. “But I guess I’ve gotten used to missing people. That’s the expat’s lot. When I land in Australia, the wash of familiarity, comfort and nostalgia is extremely settling for me. But London feels like my home now.”

Debicki was last back in Melbourne in August for a surprise visit for her birthday. “I just really wanted to see my dad’s face, and he gave me what I really needed,” she smiles. “He was watering something in the front yard and I jumped out of the corner. My sister was filming it. My mum opens the door with this all-knowing look and she’s like, ‘I knew you were here. I felt it!’ I was like, ‘Oh, come on. Give it to me, I just flew across the ocean!’” [More at Source]

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Elizabeth attending an FYC (For your consideration) award season events in New York to promote the new season of The Crown.