Page 294 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

22 May 2020

'I feel sexier as I get older': Back on TV in a compelling

new drama, Michelle Dockery tells how her own

confidence has soared after playing a succession of

strong, sassy women

• Michelle Dockery, 38, from Essex, is best know as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary
• She said playing strong characters has allowed her to feel sexier than ever at 38
• Her fiance and public relations executive John Dineen died of cancer in 2015

By GABRIELLE DONNELLY FOR WEEKEND MAGAZINE
PUBLISHED: 22:31, 22 May 2020 | UPDATED: 22:31, 22 May 2020

Since she burst onto our screens ten years ago as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary, all cut-glass
vowels and nerves of steel, Michelle Dockery’s kept us in a permanent state of emotional whiplash
with the sheer variety of roles she’s taken on.
She was a drug-addicted con artist in the 2016 TV series Good Behavior, a gun-totin’ cowgirl in the
acclaimed 2017 drama Godless, and a Cockney gangster’s moll in Guy Ritchie’s crime caper The

Gentlemen.
One thing you will not see, she insists, is Michelle Dockery playing a piece of arm candy.

‘I like to play strong women,’ she says when we meet for coffee pre-lockdown in New England,

where she’s been shooting her new TV mini-series Defending Jacob.

‘And even if they’re not strong, they have to be interesting. Multi-faceted, complex, complicated,
three-dimensional... and flawed too, because people are. Anything but boring!’

That doesn’t mean they can’t be sexy though, and she says the added bonus to playing these characters is

that, at 38, she’s finding herself feeling sexier than ever.

‘Sexy is not about having anyone else make you feel sexy, it’s about how you feel inside, and I have
certainly felt sexier as I’ve got older.

But I think that’s a confidence thing too. I’ve been lucky enough to play such strong, confident
women, and when you do that you definitely take something from them with you into your real life –
you sort of get inspiration from them.’

Her latest character in the thriller Defending Jacob is a straightforwardly good woman – although
one thrust into bewildering circumstances.