Lily

The star of this month’s hottest film (playing a young Meryl Streep, no less) has come a long way since Downton Abbey. Lily James tells Martha Hayes about her “insane” decade

- Martha Hayes

When a poised and graceful Lily James walks the red carpet next month at the premiere of her latest film, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, I’ll be picturing her practising that same strut around the “really dodgy flat” in east London where she lived during her early 20s. She was renting with two guys she went to school with; one was a “phenomenal dancer” who used to put on the actress’ heels and show her how it’s done. “I don’t even know how he squeezed them on,” she laughs, “but he literally taught me this whole routine, which I still kind of do.” James, now 29, depicts the time before she was famous with such animation. “I used to go to work – to Downton Abbey – at 5am, and everyone would still be partying,” she recalls of the dingy basement. “It was like Vegas. I’d be like, ‘Keep going, I’ll be back in 10 hours!’” Today, her living arrangements are a lot more comfortable, not to mention high profile – she rents an apartment in north London with her boyfriend of four years, The Crown star Matt Smith. Unsurprisingly, her anecdotes are less vivid, which is, in part, an attempt to protect the couple’s privacy – but also, I suspect, because she’s quite a self-conscious person. In fact, if there were a term for the exact opposite of a name-dropper, Lily James would be it.