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“I love the acceptance that you’re everything and you can be anything, whether
that’s reflecting how you actually feel or aspirational to how you want to feel.”
Shirt by Loewe.
RIGHT: Full look by Valentino.
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Offscreen, fashion plays a big part of Boyn- ton’s life too. “I think it’s such a form of self-ex- pression, and I really love using it as such,” she says. She describes a closet as full of Victorian nightdresses as it is with leather jackets. “I love the acceptance that you’re everything and you can be anything, whether that’s reflecting how you actually feel or aspirational to how you want to feel.” On the red carpet, she is often in eclectic looks—from the glittering Prada gown she paired with a teal bob at the 2019 Met Gala to the sheer, feathered, mint green Valentino gown she wore to the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Chevalier this past September. When we chat, Boynton is wearing jeans and a vintage jumper. “Whatever that says about me,” she says with a laugh. The actress’s innate sense of style no doubt led to her being named as a CHANEL ambassador in 2020, a job she relishes. “I think
I had a very different idea of fashion before I’d ever attended those shows. And then you under- stand it as walking art, knowing the intricacy and hours that go into creating each piece. It’s just fascinating,” she says.
Next up for Boynton is The Greatest Hits, a film that explores the connection between music and memory. Boynton plays Harriet, a woman griev- ing the loss of a loved one who can travel back
in time through impactful songs in her life. “It’s something that I suddenly realized I really iden- tify with. When we started prepping for this film, I started looking at the playlists that I have and they’re all nostalgic and sentimentally orientated. All my music taste is based on where I heard it, who I was listening to it with, what time of my life that I first heard it or became obsessed with it,” she says. Boynton cites Bob Dylan and The Beatles amongst her nostalgic favourites. “The first memory I have is the sound of The Beatles and my dad being there. He played [them] all the time when we were kids,” she says. It tracks, given that music has been such a strong under- current in Boynton’s career, both in her breakout role in 2016’s Sing Street, when she played muse to an aspiring rock musician, and in 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, in which she played Freddie Mercury’s onetime love, Mary Austin, alongside her real-life partner, Rami Malek.
Boynton and Malek met on the Bohemian Rhapsody set in 2017 and have been spending their time together between homes in London and Los Angeles ever since. “Kind of because of this job all of my relationships are long distance. You’re never really in the same place for a few weeks, but I’ve never really struggled with that because both of my parents are journalists and
so they’ve travelled a lot all my life,” she says. “It became normal, that you miss someone and they come back,” she says. “Because I love the job so much, it makes the travel feel purposeful and I’m excited to go on the next journey.”
As Boynton’s career continues to accelerate, it’s anyone’s guess where the journey will take
her next.
LUCY BOYNTON
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