Lucy Boynton - Hollywood's Latest Golden Girl

Hollywood’s latest golden girl Lucy Boynton plays the part of the ingenue.

- Anna Silman

YOU’ VE HEARD of Method actors. Lucy Boynton is a Method dresser. At a pre-Oscars dinner last February, in the midst of Bohemian Rhapsody’s awards-season sweep, she paired a tweed Chanel dress with a white beret, dramatic turquoise eye shadow, and just a pinch of bloodlust. “My makeup artist Jo Baker and I talk about which character we want to be tonight,” Boynton says. “For this Chanel look, we decided it was ‘serial killer housewife.’ It’s very much about, How do you want to feel tonight? How do you want to look?”

When I meet the 25-year-old British actress on a warm summer afternoon in New York, where she is based temporarily for work, she doesn’t look as if she’s about to dump a vial of arsenic into her ex-husband’s Chablis. Rather, she possesses the precociousness of a character from a British children’s book. She has asked me to meet her at midtown’s historic Morgan Library; if she were to push open one of the bookshelves and lead me into Narnia, I wouldn’t be surprised. “This is exquisite. When can I move in?” she gasps, gazing at the rows of triple-tiered inlaid-walnut bookshelves lining the walls. I’m yammering away at full volume, yet Boynton never raises her voice above a deferential hush. “Imagine having a wedding here,” she whispers to our eager tour guide, who says that while they don’t technically do weddings, they could probably pull some strings for her. “Perfect,” she says, “because I want to have a wedding here, but I don’t want anyone else to.”