Storm Reid is beaming from her Paris hotel room. Neatly waved edges frame her face and her hair cascades past her shoulders. Although there isn’t a pimple in sight or a hair out of place, she tells me, enviably, that she just woke up like this. ‘I literally just rolled out the bed,’ she laughs. It’s leftover glam from the day before for her ES Magazine cover shoot, our annual watches and jewellery special. Embellished by Pomellato, she says it was a joy to model as the collection is ‘playful and not too serious’ — which rings true of the 20-year-old in front of me: contagiously warm and refreshingly humble despite being one of the biggest ones to watch right now.
Reid is one of those rare child stars whose artistic maturation is a delight to witness. It’s no easy feat navigating the awkward transition between cutesy characters in starry films like A Wrinkle in Time and serious acting with a capital ‘A’. Her resumé is bolstered by her knack for picking roles with depth, like Gia in Euphoria (addict Rue’s long-suffering younger sibling) and Lisa in Ava DuVernay’s devastating drama, Where They See Us (about a historical case of racial injustice), having made her name in the critically acclaimed 12 Years a Slave, not to mention Beyoncé and Jay Z’s video for Family Feud. And all by the age of 14.
