The one movie Lily James could watch forever: “I just think that film’s so beautiful”
If you were lucky enough to be older than about 16 in the early 1970s, in many ways, you hit the culture lottery jackpot.
Between 1970 and around 1974, there seemed to be an unbelievably good film or album released almost weekly, from The Godfather and Exile on Main Street to The Exorcist and What’s Going On. British star Lily James is obviously someone of fine taste who understands this implicitly.
James has been a consistent presence on our screens for some 15 years now, adding beauty and heft to the likes of Baby Driver, Beatles fantasy Yesterday and wrestling drama The Iron Claw. She is one of those few British actors who can do American characters entirely convincingly, without a shred of an accent bleeding through.
This was evidenced in her performance in the controversial TV movie story, Pam & Tommy, of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, where she appeared back in 2022, complete with chest prosthetics and barbed wire tattoos. It was something of a case of life imitating art in both directions; James had found herself the subject of intense speculation and coverage in the tabloid press, just as the Mötley Crüe rocker and his wife had been some 30 years earlier.
A Guildhall-educated actor, James broke through after supporting roles in TV series including posh people’s dream TV show Downton Abbey, and was cast as the lead in Disney’s umpteenth reboot of Cinderella in 2015. A live-action adaptation with an ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham-Carter, it was a huge box office success, pulling in more than half a billion dollars and roundly receiving excellent reviews from critics.
It thrust her into a global spotlight she may not have been ready for, and her next film brought her back to earth. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a definite misstep and fared poorly at the box office and with critics. But James bounced back fast with a role in the brilliant Edgar Wright heist movie Baby Driver, a fine performance alongside Oscar-winning Gary Oldman in the Winston Churchill biopic The Darkest Hour and a more gentle showing with Ralph Fiennes in the stereotypically English archaeological drama The Dig in 2021.
When discussing the films that have influenced her career the most, James picks a mixture of those gritty, groundbreaking 1970s movies and modern big-budget blockbusters, with the likes of James Cameron’s Titanic ranking alongside the harrowing post-Vietnam drama The Deer Hunter.
One of her choices stands out particularly, that being the 1973 Terrence Malik debut, Badlands. A controversial film due to the age of the female lead, played by Sissy Spacek, and Martin Sheen’s older male character, it was a Bonnie and Clyde-esque tale of two lovers from opposite sides of the tracks who decide to violently lash out against not just their parents but authority in general by going on a murderous spree across small town America.
Later described by Sheen as “the best script he ever read”, Badlands was a revelation on its release, with critics raving about its performances and cinematography. James told Rotten Tomatoes: “Sissy Spacek—she’s out of this world, and I just think that film’s so beautiful. I like the relationship and the whole visual world of it. I love that film. I can watch it again and again and again.”
Elsewhere on her list, James picked out Richard Gere’s 1990 worldwide smash rom-com Pretty Woman, the film which made Julia Roberts famous for singing quite badly in a bath and being understandably aggressive to some snooty shop assistants.
The actor also went with the 1978 classic John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John musical Grease, admitting, “I used to write in my diary and spray perfume on it like Rizzo does when she sprays the perfume on the thing. I just, I knew every word. John Travolta is just—oh my God, [it] doesn’t get any better.”
James is about to be seen in a new Hulu movie, Swiped, which tells the story of Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd alongside fellow Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens.
