Swimming in St Tropez last week with her boyfriend of eight months, Lucas Zwirner, 28, and her daughter Marlowe, seven, Sienna Miller looked relaxed and happy. And with good reason. The 37-year- old was nearing the end of a six-week break, which has already seen her spend a week in Tuscany with her mother Jo and sister Savannah, and then travel on to France with Lucas, an art gallery executive with whom she’s said to be getting serious.
The holiday was a punctuation to what has been one of the busiest 12 months of Sienna’s 15-year career, and precedes an equally busy few months of promoting two highly anticipated films. American Woman and 21 Bridges are already garnering Oscar buzz, as well as a huge lead role in prestige TV drama, The Loudest Voice (see box out, right, for more details).
This work is substantial stuff that Sienna has loved ‘getting her teeth into’, a source tells Grazia, adding, ‘The positive response she has already had to her recent projects is very significant to her. It feels like a renaissance has been kick-started, and she is excited to see where it takes her next.’
It certainly seems that her recent work accolades mark an exciting new chapter for Sienna. In the mid-Noughties, she was suddenly propelled to fame thanks to her boho fashion sense and her relationship with fellow actor Jude Law, but says she found that her private life often overshadowed her career. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, Sienna said that she felt she had been overlooked in her professional life because of elements of her personal life, which had caused ‘a real struggle’ for her. She added, ‘It was a battle against what I was famous for. Is it because of your boyfriends? Because you wear nice clothes people like? That became much louder than the work I was doing, work that was good.
Though she doesn’t specifically reference it, one of the loudest stories was her affair with American actor and socialite Balthazar Getty, who left his fashion designer wife Rosetta for Sienna in 2008 (though they eventually got back together) – an incident that Sienna is believed to have worried impacted her advances in Hollywood.
Indeed, in another recent interview, the actor admitted to suffering a crisis of confidence when it comes to her career. She also said that she purposefully took a step back, and rarely took high profile, nor overly time-consuming roles following the birth of her daughter Marlowe with her ex-fiancé, actor Tom Sturridge, seven years ago. Now, though, it seems Sienna is ready to take on new challenges – helped by the fact that she is currently, in her own words, living a ‘quieter, small, sweet’ life in New York’s West Village with Marlowe and her boyfriend Lucas. Sienna and Lucas, who were introduced by mutual friends in New York last year, have become closer than their friends ever imagined they might.
‘He’s a bit younger than Sienna, but then, so was Tom,’ says Grazia’s source of why their relationship works. ‘He is a complete gentleman and is kind and respectful, and she loves that he’s not from her world: she finds him a tonic to what she sees as the silliness of celebrity. She has told friends that Lucas really could be someone she settles down with.'
Such is their seriousness that Sienna has been keen to ensure Lucas also has a strong relationship with her ex and the father of her child, Tom – who is still a huge part of their lives. They all live near to each other and are heavily invested in building a new, modern type of family – it was at Tom’s 33rd birthday party in London last December that Sienna and Lucas were seen together for the first time. ‘Tom lives very close to Lucas and Sienna in the Village and they spend a lot of time together,’ says a source. ‘Sienna wanted to make sure there was a big loving family at the centre of Marlowe’s life, and that she and Tom didn’t have separate lives just because they split up. It didn’t just happen overnight – it has taken work. But they are all very close.’
Sienna and Lucas (whose father, renowned gallerist David Zwirner, is said to ‘adore’ Sienna), are low-key, says the source, and he is unlikely to walk red carpets with her. ‘That’s not really their style. Their friendship group isn’t at all starry. When they are in New York they attend art openings, go out for dinner and go to the theatre. They barely get recognised. It’s all the opposite of the turbulence of Sienna’s twenties and she couldn’t be happier – or more ready for this new chapter of her life.