Hayley atwell is in her backstage quarters at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where she’s starring in Much Ado About Nothing with Tom Hiddleston. With a bed, mini-kitchen and anteroom, it feels more like a Claridge’s suite. It’s a world away from the ‘tiny cabin’ aboard a boat in the Arctic that she stayed in while filming Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (out in May). ‘We filmed in Svalbard,’ she explains. ‘It looked like a massive industrial fishing boat.’
For her second outing as thief-turnedagent Grace in Tom Cruise’s blockbuster franchise, as well as training to spot frostbite, there was a constant security patrol against polar bears. ‘They’re the only species that will kill not just for food, or out of self-defence, but for fun,’ Atwell tells me. ‘Svalbard is a place where it was impossible to shoot. That’s why we went there, because it’s Mission: Impossible, not mission a bit difficult.’
She recounts a story of Cruise giving her a lift back from the set on a Ski-Doo. ‘He stopped to show me this beautiful view of the glacier. He looks at me and says, “I really want to thank you for your work out here.” And I was like, “Well, thank you. Anyway…” “No, no, no, no, Hayley,” Tom said. “Hayley, Hayley, we have all seen you have thrived out here. You have come into your own out here. I’m serious, thank you.”’
Gosh, a pep talk from Tom Cruise. ‘He’s really sincere and he acknowledges hard work. I love his work ethic and the only way to carry on working at that level next to him is to keep saying yes.’ An experienced stage star with three Olivier nominations to her name, among the five-star reviews for Much Ado About Nothing her performance as heroine Beatrice has been praised as ‘supreme’. Banish any ‘hey nonny’ thoughts of the 1993 Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh movie classic. This is Shakespeare for the TikTok generation, with dance routines, pink confetti, novelty beer helmets and enormous furry heads. The staging is in keeping with its lauded director Jamie Lloyd, with whom Atwell is working for a third time.
‘Day one of rehearsals, when we walked in and saw the model set with this giant heart and confetti and these animal heads, I was like, “Oh yeah, we’re not doing the corset barn dancing version.”’ Instead, the soundtrack leans to ’90s club bangers, Diva House and a little boyband action. Millennial women: you may sob when I Swear by All 4 One comes on. ‘From day one we were dancing, showing off our club skills.’ Her favourite track? ‘Groove Is In The Heart.’
It might render Shakespeare purists speechless but it’s brilliant fun – not least when Hiddleston rips off his top to reveal some very Marvel-honed abs. Both he and Atwell are part of the sprawling Marvel universe, he as god of mischief Loki, she as agent Peggy Carter, a role that’s seen her appear in six films and two TV series spin-offs, including Agent Carter. Because everything is knowing and meta now, this does not go unacknowledged: on stage two cardboard cutouts of their respective Marvel characters come out. ‘There’s no point in not embracing it.’
This is the first time she and Hiddleston have worked together, although they’ve been friends since meeting at a RADA audition 20 years ago. He is now 44, she 42 – and the pair have had similar career trajectories, skirting through TV (Atwell’s credits include Black Mirror, Howards End and Heartstopper), theatre and Hollywood franchises. ‘It’s probably because we share an appetite for variety’, says Atwell. ‘We chatted about it the other day. If we could go back to ourselves from 20 years ago…we were babies – we didn’t know you can’t forge a path for yourself. So much is luck and so much is dependent on someone else choosing you to be in something.’
Atwell lives in London with her fiancé Ned Wolfgang Kelly, a music producer, and their baby, born last year – about whom she is fiercely private. As someone who has had their fair share of high-profile parts and red carpets, she’s kept her personal life relatively under wraps. How has she managed this? ‘Experience and seeing other people in the public eye navigate it beautifully and going, “Oh, isn’t it interesting – I know very little about Cate Blanchett’s personal life, but my god, I know about her work.”’
She cites a recent piece about herself, which opened with a hyperbolic headline featuring a quote taken out of context. ‘I find it really interesting how male profiles tend to talk about, you know, someone in their forties, for example, at the peak of their powers. The full passion of their manhood and ability to do all these amazing things, and often a female profile will begin with how they’re affected by ageing and it’s really aesthetic. [I take it with] a chuckle and a bemused tolerance.’
Still, after the play closes (on her birthday, 5 April) she will embark on the Mission press tour, where fashion will undoubtedly be a focus. Her approach to this? ‘My journey in fashion has become more about my interest in the storytelling behind the look. I’m obsessed with Cynthia Erivo, her whole defined look, or Saoirse Ronan, demure, powerful. Tilda Swinton, amazing… That, to me, is the art side of fashion rather than, “Do I look hot?”’
She is pragmatic about what the future might hold career-wise. ‘There’s so little I’m actually in control of,’ she says. ‘I would love to become more involved in the production side of things. Within my contemporaries, it’s rare that you don’t have something you’re working on to executive produce.’ How does she feel about roles for ‘older’ women opening up? ‘I think they stick out because they’re still rare.’ I cite Demi Moore in The Substance, Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. There seem to be more, I say, but on condition of relating to a certain beauty standard. ‘Yes. You can do it, but it has to be meta or it has to be a comment on [ageing and beauty standards].
‘You have to look at the reality of the system and be engaged in the conversation, rather than reject it or be really angry. You can go, “I’m off to do [something else],” but no one’s going to watch it or fund it. You can’t be outside of the system and have any sort of real platform. Trying to get anything made is so hard. Having star power means you can get things made. I don’t feel like I have that yet. I hope one day I will be in a position where it feels like there is a clearer path of how I would, but at the moment it’s reserved for the very, very few. It’s still, for women, an anomaly. That’s an ongoing mountain.’ But one, I imagine, that in future she can nudge out of the way.
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ runs until 5 April at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane; ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ is in cinemas 21 May
Photographs: Jason Hetherington. Styling: Jenny Kennedy. Hair: Bjorn Krischker at The Wall Group using Redken. Make-up: Kenneth Son at The Wall Group using YSL Beauty. Nails: Robbie Tomkins at LMC Worldwide using Bio Sculpture. Tailor: Kim Lareau. Photographer's assistant: Alfie Bungay. Stylist's assistant: Aoife Giblin.
Hayley wears: (left) coat, £7,530, Tod’s; (right) gilet, £3,295, and trousers, £1,130, both Tod’s