Aimee Lou Wood believes in astrology — just not quite as blindly as she once did. “I allow astrology to guide a lot of my life,” she says, cheerfully, before catching herself. Because somewhere between arriving in Thailand to film The White Lotus and leaving seven months later, something shifted.
Playing Chelsea, a woman who moves through life as though everything is preordained, made her question that instinctive trust in the stars. “Playing her made me go, ‘Okay, let's just make sure that we don't get too obsessed with astrology’, because look what happened to Chelsea… so I'm like, because she thought everything was fate, and she thought everything was written out in the stars, and that she didn't have any free will and that she didn't have any agency — she died.”
Wood laughs: “So, I'm like, ‘let's not get too into astrology.’”
It’s less a rejection than a recalibration. Wood tells me has long leaned towards instinct, towards feeling her way through characters rather than over-explaining them and astrology, for her, sits within that. Not as doctrine, but as a tool. A way of sketching out a character’s inner life, even if it never appears on screen. She’s experimented with other ways in, too.
While shooting her upcoming film The Idiots, she and her co-star Johnny Flynn pulled tarot cards at the start of the project and used them to shape their performances as they went. “We let the tarots that fell guide us throughout the job and our characters,” she says. “And it was so helpful.”
When we speak, it’s over the phone. Even through the line, Wood’s energy is unmistakable: quick, disarmingly honest, warm. She has the kind of presence that makes you feel instantly at ease, just like many of her on-screen characters.
At 32, she is also one of the most in-demand actresses of her generation. Her breakout role in Sex Education, landed straight out of drama school, turned her into a fan favourite almost overnight and a BATFA winner. But it was The White Lotus and her turn as Chelsea that propelled her into something closer to global recognition.
If the show was all-consuming on screen, it was just as immersive off it. The cast, living together in the sun-drenched bubble of the Four Seasons Koh Samui, formed the kind of bond that doesn’t always survive once filming ends. In this case, it has.
“Our group is still active,” Wood says of the cast WhatsApp. “It’s a bit less active, but it’s still active. It’s sweet.”
I still speak to Leslie Bibb every single day
The dynamic is exactly what you’d expect: messages of congratulations when someone lands a nomination, photos when cast members run into each other, a steady thread of shared experience that continues long after the cameras stop rolling.
Some connections have held more tightly. She shares: “I still speak to Leslie [Bibb] every single day, and we voice note every day. And I still speak to Patrick [Schwarzenegger], and I still speak to everyone… but Leslie's definitely is the person I speak to the most, and Michelle [Monaghan]... Leslie is the kind of, that's constant communication.”
There’s already a new cohort preparing to check in for the next season in Saint-Tropez, with names including Vincent Cassel, Helena Bonham Carter and Steve Coogan already cast. Wood now finds herself in a new position of offering advice to the next group of guests, especially the newcomers to industry; Caleb Jonte Edwards, Marissa Long and Dylan Ennis.
“I've had such amazing role models that have just shown me through me just watching them how to be on a set,” she says, recalling watching her Living co-star Bill Nighy, 76, greet every member of the cast and crew by name. “I think a big bit of advice for me would be really look to your elders and really speak to them and really listen, also that's humility, which is extremely important.”
The past year has been one of acceleration. Alongside roles in Toxic Town and Daddy Issues, Wood co-created her first television series, Film Club, with Ralph Davis. Since we last spoke, she’s picked up two further Bafta TV nominations, for Film Club and for The White Lotus.
And the momentum shows no sign of slowing. Next, she takes on Pattie Boyd — model, photographer and George Harrison’s wife — in Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-part Beatles biopic, starring alongside Joseph Quinn as Harrison, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon.
Boyd isn’t the first real-life figure she has played — she portrayed Corby mother Tracey Taylor in Toxic Town — but this feels different. Boyd exists within a fixed cultural narrative, shaped by decades of fascination. It’s a role that comes with expectation.
“I've not done a proper day yet,” Wood says. “With this one, everyone knows these people so it's very different, and it's quite intimidating.” Even the physical transformation is striking. She shares: “I've gone and done my fittings with my blonde hair and my blue eyes. I'm really stepping into a different person… We look like them... so it's kind of trippy.”
For an actor who tends to rely on instinct, the role demands something more structured.
I have to make sure that I do keep stepping out my comfort zone wherever I can, because it's so easy at this point to stay in it
“It will require discipline, which I can sometimes be like, ‘let's just see how it goes, and throw paint at the wall and see’, which is great for certain things, but I actually can't do that with Pattie,” she says. “I am going to have to really prep, and I am going to have to really be detailed about that, because she is someone who is so recognisable and obviously not do an impression. But I have to be specific whilst also being free, but that so I think that's a good muscle to like, flex, but it scares me.”
There is, though, a moment where she allows herself to lean back into the idea of fate — if only slightly. Before she’d even landed the role, she had already met Joseph Quinn. The two were cast in the same Versace eyewear campaign, spending a day shooting together that now feels almost suspiciously well-timed.
“It was fate,” she says, laughing. “We both got that bloody Versace eyewear campaign, before I’d got the part. So, we did that together, and we had the funnest time. He was cracking me up all day.”
“What I really like about Joe, he’s just himself,” she says. It’s a quality she instinctively links to Harrison — the Beatle who famously struggled with the machinery of fame. “George was quite sensitive, and just loved the art of it, but was quite intimidated by the kind of stuff around it,” she adds. “And I think me and Joe are both similar in that way, like we're not that sceney. I think we just got on really, because he's quite eccentric, which I love.
“Oh, he's an Aquarius,” she adds, almost as an aside. “So it's perfect.”
Aside from film work, she has also been cast as Jane in a new television adaptation of Jane Eyre, a project she is, she says simply, “so excited” about. So, if Pattie Boyd represents discipline, Jane Eyre offers something else entirely.
“I think it's going to be great to then do something like Jane Eyre,” she explains. “It's like, ‘okay, I'm playing Pattie. She was this really cool style icon, gorgeous, popular, sociable, and then I'll get to go and play feral Jane, which feels that feels more that feels more like home to me.’”
But Wood is wary of leaning too heavily into what comes naturally. At this point in her career, she is acutely aware of the temptation to stay within safe territory when your star is burning bright.
“I have to make sure that I do keep stepping out my comfort zone wherever I can, because it's so easy at this point to stay in it,” she says. “I can understand why people do that, I can understand why because the more eyes that are on you, the more scared you are to fail. So I can see why people go, ‘let me just do what I know I can do,’ but that's then the death of your own creativity.”
She catches herself, then doubles down. “So I'm like, ‘Okay, keep stepping out that bloody comfort zone’, even though it actually really scares me.”
The White Lotus is available to stream on HBO Max now
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