Ellie Bamber transformed into legendary supermodel Kate Moss for new film Moss & Freud. She reveals the unusual trick used by the costume designer to get her in the zone
Sprayed with her distinctive perfume the moment she stepped into the room, Ellie Bamber was told: “Let’s talk like Kate.” Already looking like the supermodel – wearing her clothes and with the same blonde tones in her hair – now she even smelt like Kate Moss.
She laughs about her transformation, speaking ahead of the UK cinema release of Moss & Freud – a biographical drama following the bond between the style icon and the artist Lucian Freud – on Friday. Recalling her daily encounters with James Brown, who was key costume designer and has been Kate’s friend since childhood, she says: “He would spray me every morning with Kate’s favourite perfume [Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger]. He would say, ‘let’s talk like Kate’. That is usually how a day would start. He was able to pull from Kate’s archive, so a lot of the pieces I wear are Kate’s. That is very cool. It felt amazing and wonderful.”
Permitted to wear Kate’s famous John Galliano Union Jack blazer and her vintage blue sequinned dress, worn to her 30th birthday party at London’s Claridge’s, sadly, Ellie hasn’t got to keep them. She says: “I didn’t get to keep Kate’s birthday dress. But I got to keep quite a few of James’ vintage finds. I got a pair of really amazing boots. There was also a latex dress that I wear when I’m on a Greta Garbo-inspired photo shoot. It was made by a UK designer called Bang London that was made for me.”
Ellie, from Surrey, played Kate when she posed naked, aged 28 and pregnant with Lila-Grace – her daughter with Jefferson Hack – for Freud, for his 2002 Naked Portrait, which sold for £3.9m at a London auction the same year. She says she wasn’t dressed when she was offered the role, explaining: “I remember being in the kitchen in my dressing gown. When I received the email, I was pretty blown away. I was very, very excited but a little bit nervous.”
Like Kate, who forged an unlikely friendship with Freud, who died in 2011, aged 88, Ellie became pals with Derek Jacobi, 87, who played him. Bonding over fish lunches near her co-star’s home in Primrose Hill, north London, she says: .”The chemistry with Derek was immediate. We clicked and we went for some lovely lunches and had a laugh.
“This film shows an all round picture and Derek and I trusted each other. It is easy to love each other. On set, I remember he kept talking about this man called Laurence. I remember saying one day ‘are you talking about Laurence Olivier?’ I was just spellbound by his stories of the theatre. It was magical learning from him and the experiences he has had.”
The warts-and-all movie promises an honest depiction of former party girl Kate, showing her snorting lines of cocaine on wild nights out during the 1990s, dragging her half-dressed chauffeur to a raunchy London sex club and the moment she was almost killed in a car crash. But it also shows a tender side to the model.
It depicts her trauma, aged 17, after being pressured to go topless on a Calvin Klein jeans campaign shoot. Photographed in 1992 by Herb Ritts, she was shown straddled on a chair by actor and former rapper Mark Wahlberg. Kate, 52, has since said the famous black and white photoshoot made her so anxious she couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks.
Kate was executive producer on the film, which sees her gathering strength, as she becomes more experienced. And her friendship with Freud – who she meets through his fashion designer daughter Bella Freud – helps her to find the strength to fight back against exploitation.
Playing the Croydon-born star was “frightening,” according to Ellie, who explains: “I felt like I had a responsibility to do her justice. It was a challenge. Anything that gives you fear is always a great thing to go and do.”
Speaking at the London premiere at Selfridges department store this week, she recalls working with renowned movement director Polly Bennett, who helped Rami Malek before he played Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. To play Kate, Ellie stuck to a rigorous workout routine, wore colour-changing contact lenses, dyed her hair and perfected her catwalk strides and ‘devil-may-care’ attitude in a church gym.
James Brown helped, too, as she perfected Kate’s mannerisms and unique cackle. She says: “An amazing vocal coach helped me learn Kate’s mannerisms and where they come from. All the catwalk stuff was fun. Polly Bennett is just spectacular. We spent many days in a kind of school gymnasium. “When we first got in there she was just like ‘OK, we are going to start with the catwalk’. We trawled through every video we could find. Polly explores psychologically why someone moves that way. And why they gesticulate a certain way. It was fascinating.”
Kate’s laugh was particularly intriguing. Ellie says: “I noticed that if Kate was nervous she would laugh a certain way. There was definitely a mannerism where she would hide her face a bit more if she was feeling nervous or being photographed at a young age. But the big thing that we spent hours on was the laugh, the cackle. Towards the end of filming, my everyday laugh got a bit funny, and my brother was like, ‘you have to stop’”.
Ellie, whose professional stage debut, aged 13, was in Trevor Nunn’s 2010 production of Aspects of Love in London, soon graduated to Hollywood – appearing in Tom Ford’s 2016 psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals. She also played Mandy Rice-Davies in the BBC series The Trial of Christine Keeler and has had various film roles.
And after playing Kate – who now promotes healthy living, having been dubbed ‘Cocaine Kate’ in the 1990s – they are now friends. She says: “I met Kate at a party after I found out I was playing her. It was very serendipitous. “We were at a mutual friend’s party and it was great to interact with her, because there was no pre-nerve energy we were straight in and it was fun, naughty.”
But Kate, who often struggled to sit still for Freud because she was pregnant, never told Ellie how to play her. She says: “Through spending time with her and having conversations with her, I just got an idea of who she was. I was trying not to study her the whole time, even though I was.
“I think seeing her cheeky humour and naughtiness was one of the things that really gave me free rein to be like, ‘OK, I can relax into this and just have a lot of fun’. Kate is so free. She is a total one of a kind human being. I love having a laugh with her. She is so naughty. I just learned a lot watching her over the years.”
And she believes the supermodel, who has graced 127 Vogue covers, remains as influential as ever. She says: “I see this movie as a coming of age story about a woman who is in a really critical moment in her life. It’s also about how learning from an elder can really stand you in good stead for the rest of your career. It’s also a story about motherhood and how Kate is such a wonderful mother. That’s a really important narrative that threads through the film. This is one of the biggest learning experiences I have had. I made it with care.”
*Moss & Freud opens in cinemas from Friday.
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