Mia Threapleton is making her dreams a reality
“Watching Moonrise Kingdom again. I really love this film. Wish I could work with Wes Anderson.” Mia Threapleton, journal entry, 2013
Apparently, Mia Threapleton completely forgot about this entry from half a life ago, but since the age of thirteen, the actor has been overly keen to work with ‘Wes’ (they’re on a first-name basis now). For a girl who used to prance around the house singing “My Name is Tallulah” — which the twenty-four year old also sang for me on Zoom — it sounds like a very gratifying full-circle moment. She greets me from her floor on 23 May, the day that her new film (and first major role), The Phoenician Scheme, directed by Wes Anderson, opens at cinemas across the UK. Not only that, she’s just come back from a premier- heavy week at Cannes Film Festival, where the film received a six-and-a-half-minute standing ovation. That’s quite a busy week for anyone, let alone a breakout star.
If, when you first heard the name ‘Mia Threapleton’, you thought ‘Princess of Genovia’, you’d be wrong. And if you proceeded to Google her, only to discover that she’s Kate Winslet’s daughter and a potential princess of the film industry, well, that’s not quite right either. Yes, she is Winslet’s daughter, but no, that doesn’t mean she was raised anywhere near a film set. In fact, far from it. While there’s no denying that Threapleton’s film education is more well rounded than most (she recommends I watch Fantastic Planet and Mary and Max to start), her extent of cinematic education can only be credited to sitting in front of the television, or roles she’s landed after round upon round of auditions.
“I did not grow up going to a film set at all, I really didn’t,” says Threapleton. “Also, taking your kid into that kind of environment when you’re the one doing the acting is the equivalent of being a lawyer and taking your kid into the courtroom. Because having now experienced what I have, that work environment is the most profound place of concentration for me, and I love that about the job.” The first impressive quality that Mia portrays, then, is sheer honesty — and openness. Besides having an honest-type face, she mentions over and over how lucky she feels not only to have taken part in a Wes Anderson film, but to have worked with so many people. “Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Benicio Del Toro and Tom Hanks and — I can’t believe I just said that. I can’t believe I just said that.”
She takes me back to acting, day one. Crawling around the floor of her school, age seven, pretending to be a lion. Next came fawning over Bugsy Malone and, specifically, Jodie Foster whenever she appeared on a screen. Then, voicing her desire to pursue acting when she was ten. Despite her earnestness, there’s no denying that desire that was fuelled by her creative parents — and perhaps accidentally watching some age-inappropriate films before her time (Threapleton says she watched Gaspar Noé’s Love and We Need To Talk About Kevin before the age of fourteen). But as the actor reiterates, her creative spirit was not developed growing up on set. And, in fact, she can count the amount of times she did so on “one and a half hands” before landing a role herself.
When I ask Threapleton what life was like before landing this particular role, she tells me it’s been a two- year journey, which included many auditions, working on other projects and, of course, expanding her knowledge of film and brain bank of creativity. She’s even been delving deep into side projects solely for the purpose of stretching her creative muscles. “I have fun making small, little fun-for-fun films on the side, or going into weird film libraries and watching films that I’ve never heard of and things that I find interesting,” she tells me. “I have a bit of an eclectic style of films that I like to watch.”
This excerpt was taken from HUNGER Issue 35: F**k it. Stay tuned for the full story.
- PhotographerRankin
- WriterCamille Bavera
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