What’s all this f***ed-up s*** about how heroin chic is back?” Bel Powley is sprawled out, barefoot, on a chaise longue. And she’s mad. “Like, what the hell even is that? Sorry, that’s a complete sidenote, but hopefully that’s gonna die a death again, right?”
It’s not a total sidenote. We’ve been discussing how, in the Noughties – when the 31-year-old star of The Morning Show and Everything I Know About Love was a teenager – it was rare to see a “normal” body on film. Thigh gaps, perky bums and washboard stomachs always seemed to nab top billing. One of Powley’s first films, though – the subversive, sometimes uncomfortably honest coming-of-age story The Diary of a Teenage Girl – put ordinary bodies front and centre. Then poked and prodded at them, too. One scene in the 2015 movie saw Powley’s hormone-packed teen stand naked before the mirror and inspect the way she was changing.
