Sienna Miller has overslept. I arrive at the kitchen door of her 16th-century cottage, nestled down a bucolic Buckinghamshire lane, during a summer downpour one Thursday morning, to be greeted by a pyjama-clad Miller and a scene of gentle domestic chaos so quintessentially English it veers on parody.
Next to the yellow roses, slung in a green ceramic jug on the large wooden table, is a mixing bowl with a whisk in – I’ve interrupted Miller making crepes (the first is scraped into the bin) for her 10-year-old daughter, Marlowe, who is in the next room watching cartoons. Two (or is it three?) dogs rush in and out. A Royal Mail postman comes down the garden path with a parcel. And, through it all, Miller is busily chatting chatting chatting in her gently cut-glass tones: apologising for not being ready; asking me how I’d like my tea – little cup or one of those big ones that need two hands? – and recounting the story of giving birth to “Mar” (I’m eight and a half months pregnant, a walking conversation starter). It took a cool 27 hours. Nutella goes on the crepe, a straw is punched through a juice carton, and off she rushes upstairs to pop a bra on and brush her teeth.
We all feel like we know Sienna, don’t we? She has been a fixture on screens, in fashion magazines – and on newspaper front pages – for the past two decades. And, if you hadn’t noticed, there is now something of a Siennasance afoot. The 40-year-old actor has finally made her way into the world of prestige TV, a little later perhaps than some of her peers. There’s something of the old school about Miller, with her allergy to social media, who, up until now, has “slightly clung” to independent cinema that “no one sees”. “And it’s kind of devastating,” she says, back in the kitchen and curled into a sheepskin-lined chair. The stripy pyjama bottoms have been replaced by pale blue jeans and a caramel-coloured vest top a shade or two lighter than her deep summer tan. “It’s depressing, all that work. So I’m quite enjoying doing shows that everybody sees. There’s a reward in that.”
And many millions did indeed watch her first proper foray into the world of streaming in Anatomy of a Scandal (it became Netflix’s number one English language series back in April). Miller played Sophie Whitehouse, a Tory MP’s wife, in a tale of betrayal and gaslighting. Then came her turn as American actor Lark in Steve Coogan and Sarah Solemani’s clever Chivalry, a rumination on the knotty issues of power and consent in the film industry post #MeToo. Next, she will star in Apple’s Extrapolations, a climate change drama boasting a stellar cast: Marion Cotillard, Gemma Chan, Tahar Rahim, David Schwimmer to name but a few. Oh, and Meryl Streep, who plays Miller’s mother. “I’ve peaked, I’ve ticked every box,” says Sienna with a smile.
The anthology drama series follows multiple stories of how the climate crisis will have impacted our work, world and personal lives in the near future. Miller plays a scientist in the year 2046 tasked with studying the last ever humpback whale. “We’ve got to a place where we can translate whale song into language so we can communicate,” she explains. “And I’m dealing with a billionaire who’s been investing in what people assume is a kind of anti-extinction programme.” Needless to say, there’s something much darker going on behind the scenes. (Or, as Miller puts it, “The whale is getting completely f**ked over.”)
Miller has always been a keen environmental campaigner. She took up the cause long before many other people in the public eye. “I’m not trying to sell myself as this kind of leader in the climate change movement by any means,” she says. “But I did get involved at an early age – it was fascinating.” Yet, the papers at the time were scathing of her efforts. Take, for example, a 2007 story in The Times about her involvement in the launch of a global warming awareness campaign. It led with “Sienna’s shocking walk on the serious side”.
This, alas, is the thinnest edge of the wedge when it comes to Sienna’s first years of stardom. The early Noughties, when she was rocketing to fame – thanks to roles in Alfie and Layer Cake, being Jude Law’s girlfriend and her penchant for micro denim minis, low-slung belts and cowboy boots – were a uniquely grotesque time for women in the spotlight. In 2005, when she was 23 and starring in a Wyndham’s Theatre production of As You Like It, The Sun published a story that Miller was rumoured to be pregnant. It was correct – she was, and barely 12 weeks, a fact only her very inner circle knew. Her choice not to continue with the pregnancy was, she tells me, “in many ways impacted by that behaviour”. In the aftermath, “People on the street would shout ‘baby killer’ at me.” She nearly shrugs, adding generously, “That’s fine. That’s their opinion. You know, there’s always going to be people like that.” Still, now, I notice, she is in a state of semi-apology for her actions.
Some years later, it was revealed that Miller was – like Hugh Grant and Heather Mills – among the high-profile victims of the phone hacking scandal and in 2019 she began legal proceedings against News Group, over alleged voicemail interception and misuse of private information. Last December, she settled out of court. Ultimately, she wanted to go to full trial, but as she said in her excoriating speech afterwards, “That legal recourse is not available to me or to anyone who does not have countless millions of pounds to spend on the pursuit of justice.”
“I would love to not have to tell the f**king world that I had an abortion that I didn’t want,” she says today, the anger still close to the surface. “But the fact is, all of that is out there anyway, what can I do with it? I can walk away or sweep it under the carpet or I can advocate for some form of justice, not necessarily only for me, because in many ways it’s so in the past and life has really moved on, but for people who don’t have that kind of outreach.”
This, I tell her, is the TV show she should be putting into development – “grossly underestimated actor takes on media conglomerate”. She laughs ruefully. Her speech, which she was allowed to make as a condition of the settlement, was by her own admission “incredibly punchy” and sounds like a thriller in the making. “I wanted to expose the criminality that runs through the heart of this corporation,” reads one part. “I wanted to share News Group’s secrets just as they have shared mine.”
She was slightly deflated at its response: “I thought that this was going to be a bomb, because it was very direct.” That said, journalists have been in touch, both anonymously with “intel” to help her case and also to apologise for their treatment of her. Some she has met. But it’s still “really upsetting to step back”, she admits. Recently, she took part in an investigative documentary about the phone hacking scandal in which she “got interviewed intimately for three hours and shown articles and, you know, I cried, which I just would never want to do. It’s part of the fabric of what I am today, for sure. Which is actually an extraordinary addition to the substance of a person.”
Indeed. Though her reaction at the time was, “A couple of years of absolutely chaotic behaviour. I did not know which way was up or down. I was, I suppose, in the midst of an absolute breakdown on every single level.” Back then, she “couldn’t say what had actually happened. My way of dealing with that was to slightly lose it. And I did, I was running around the Vanity Fair party with no shoes on and getting really pissed.”
But, I say, you were also just a twentysomething trying to live their life, being a bit reckless. “I don’t judge it, necessarily,” she agrees. “There are some things I regret, because I wish I’d been more protected. But life was so out of control. It’s a miracle that I actually retained a career and a life.”
Although she came close, she was not broken by the experience. Nor has her spirit been suffocated – she is so open and candid about her experiences, with a deliciously dark streak of humour. In the past few years she has begun to truly understand her worth – quite literally. She recounts how, several years ago, she was “offered less than half” of what a male costar was going to earn a week for a play on Broadway. “I said to the producer, who was extremely powerful, it’s not about money – it’s about fairness and respect, thinking they’d come back and say, ‘Of course, of course.’ But they didn’t. They just said, ‘Well f**k off then,’” she snorts. (The play happened, but she won’t name it – “I don’t want to be mean.”)
Initially she “felt terrible about myself and embarrassed”, but it ended up being a “pivotal moment”. “I realised I had every right to be equally subsidised for the work that I would have done.” Which is ultimately why the late actor Chadwick Boseman reallocated some of his salary so Miller’s fee could be met for their 2019 film 21 Bridges, on which Boseman was also a producer. Afterwards, she told him, “‘What you did was extraordinary and meant the world.’ He came up to me when we wrapped and said, ‘You got paid what you deserved.’”
She’s impressed by how things have changed. Actors who are “10 years younger have the word ‘no’ in their language in a way that I didn’t. [Now] if you say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable’ in front of any form of executive, they’re shitting their pants. You’re included in a conversation about your level of comfort. It’s changed everything.”
Turning 40 last December was revelatory for Miller. “My thirties were hard,” she admits. “Really hard.” How so? “There was a lot of anxiety. Relationships hadn’t worked out – I imagined that I would be married with three kids, being a great mum. I love being a mother. It’s what I do best… minus the crap crepe-ing.” But she was “sad”.
“I’d invested what felt like the important years in something that was just a bucket with a hole in it of a person. I wasted time. And I felt like time was really my currency.” She’s quick to point out she is not referring to Tom Sturridge, Marlowe’s father and her “best friend”. The two have clearly got co-parenting down pat and Miller loves their “unconventional” set up, though in hindsight, maybe they wouldn’t have spent part of lockdown with their respective partners and some friends together in a house in Upstate New York.
“I had my then boyfriend,” says Miller, pulling a face that suggests he is not, and never will be, held in the same esteem as Sturridge. “And Tom’s then girlfriend came and… it was definitely eccentric,” she says, laughing, putting her face in her hands. “I can’t go into detail but the wheels came off and everything went horribly wrong.” On the upside: “It will make a fantastic play.”
Now, she is in a relationship with model Oli Green, 15 years her junior (“there’s a misogyny that is ingrained in men of my age and older that I don’t see in [the] generation below”), while Sturridge is seeing her friend Alexa Chung. “I’m really happy for them. It’s genuinely lovely,” she says sincerely. And, most importantly, think of the “wardrobe access that Marlowe will have between the two of us”. For a moment, I find myself intensely jealous of a 10-year-old. It has benefits for Miller too – “Marlowe comes home with Alexa’s jumpers that I steal. I’ve got one upstairs…”
These days, Vestiaire Collective is Miller’s one-stop fashion shop. She shows me her current basket, mainly containing Phoebe Philo-era Céline jumpers. Her next dream is to re-create a Colette-style boutique, where her friends can sell artisanal wares alongside the skincare line she is developing. The Vogue office is, I tell her, obsessed with her flawless skin: “Well they’re all gonna get it,” she laughs.
First though, she has to pack up her cottage to return to the US in two days’ time: she, Sturridge and Marlowe have lived in New York since 2016, and Miller is soon to start production on a mammoth Kevin Costner movie in Utah. A permanent move back to the UK is on the horizon though. New York is “unravelling”, she says. Besides, she misses the British “irreverence, the humour, laughing with a cabbie, a good bloody pub”.
Outside, the rain has stopped. Our cups are drained. I’m aware Miller has so much to do, in so many ways. “When I got to 40, it was like coming out of a clearing,” she says, with a smile. “I felt so excited. As a young woman I was so trivialised and so insubstantial-seeming, but there’s very little that anyone can say to a 40-year-old woman. And I also don’t give a f**k. It was such a headline in my life – what people thought of me. It was so loud that I believed it. Now I’ve got to a point where it’s absolutely none of your business.” She’s on a roll, and it’s entirely infectious. “I will do my job,” she says. “I will be a pleasure to work with. I will raise my girl. And I will live my life.”
Extrapolations will be out next year
