Sienna Miller, photographed for ELLE magazine
(Picture: ELLE UK / Tom Schirmacher)Actress Sienna Miller has opened up about the “insidious” impact of being catapulted to fame in her 20s during her relationship with Jude Law.
In a cover interview with ELLE UK, the star, 40, revealed she had frozen her eggs when she hit the milestone birthday and that she now feels “more in control” of her life.
Miller’s acting breakthrough came after appearing alongside Jude Law in 2004’s Alfie, with whom she later had a relationship.
She told the magazine that she was “catapulted into a totally parallel universe” amid tabloid attention on the pair.
“There was a lot of magic at that time. At first, it was kind of comical, but very quickly it became insidious and, yeah, scary,” she said.
“And my boyfriend [at the time] had been experiencing it for years and felt, understandably, a lot of hostility towards that kind of attention.
“So, my initial reaction was the same. I became so litigious, just to try and carve out an existence that I could manage.
“You’ve seen women implode as a result of that. You can’t hold onto sanity or grounding.”
Miller, a mother to nine-year-old Marlowe, revealed she felt relieved to have left behind her 20s and the pressure to have more children.
“Biology is incredibly cruel on women in that decade – that’s the headline, or it certainly was for me,” she told the magazine.
“Then I got to 40 and I froze some eggs. Having been really focused on the need to have another baby, I’m just like, ‘If it happens, it happens.’ That kind of existential threat has dissipated.”
The actress spoke of her frustration with being underestimated in the industry, saying: “‘I don’t know what more I have to do.”
She said that she had reached “a point of nihilism” about it, adding that since turning 40 she has surrendered to “being on some sort of life journey”.
Miller will feature as Sophie Whitehouse, the wife of a powerful politician in Netflix’s upcoming Anatomy of a Scandal. It is billed as a “psychological thriller and gripping courtroom drama” which “infiltrates Britain’s elite through personal and political scandal”.
The star said she could see some similarities between herself and the character as “I’ve experienced some of the things she has experienced”.
However, she added: “[But] her way of dealing with what’s thrown at her is the absolute antithesis of what my way is.
“And so, in a kind of twisted, tourism sense, I just wanted to see how it would feel to react differently.”
