Totally Thandie: As a teenage actress, Thandie Newton battled bulimia and exploitation, but now combines domestic bliss with superstardom

PUBLISHED: 00:01, 24 March 2013 | UPDATED: 00:01, 24 March 2013

She tells Jane Gordon how she changed her life (and how she still looks so good, sans surgery)

Actress Thandie Newton is the face of Olay Total Effects

It's rather reassuring to discover that the ‘face’ of Olay Total Effects actually moves.

Unlike so many other static, artificially enhanced celebrity ‘faces’, there is absolutely no doubt
that 40-year-old Thandie (the ‘h’ is silent) Newton’s youthful beauty is – rather like the organic but hearty food she is eating during our lunchtime meeting – 100 per cent natural.

In fact, it has to be said that the stunning face of the British actress (with roles in Beloved, Mission: Impossible II, The Pursuit of Happyness, W and Crash, for which she won a Bafta) not only moves, it is in almost perpetual motion.

As she talks (and she talks a lot), she uses her expressions as part of her punctuation (along
with hand-waving and twisting her shiny dark hair in and out of a ponytail).

‘I would never consider surgery because how can you communicate feelings if your face doesn’t move?’

When I say how refreshing it is to encounter an actress who hasn’t had ‘work’ and what a brilliant advertisement she is for Olay Total Effects (she has had a lifelong loyalty to the brand, inherited from her mother), she nods her head in agreement.

‘People’s faces are meant to move – it’s the way we express our emotions. I am 40 and in the film industry, so of course I am aware of why some actresses might choose to have surgery – and
I am not judgmental – but I would never consider it because how can you communicate feelings if your face doesn’t move? The actresses who are my icons have expressive faces that are ageing beautifully: Isabelle Huppert, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith,’ she responds.

But while Thandie rejects the idea of surgical work she is a passionate advocate of a more cerebral variety.

From her 20s she has used therapy to help her overcome the difficulties of an unusual and isolating childhood and the exploitation she was subjected to as a naive teenager – she won her first role at 16 – in the film industry.

Right: Thandie with husband Ol Parker and her parents in 2007, and, far right, with daughter Ripley

From left: Thandie with husband Ol Parker and her parents in 2007, and, far right, with daughter Ripley

Born in London to her Zimbabwean mother Nyasha and her British father Nick, she spent her first three years in Zambia before the family – she has a younger brother, Jamie, now a TV producer – moved to Cornwall.

As protected as Thandie and her brother were by their parents – her mother was a healthcare worker and her father a lab technician turned artist – they were the only black family in the area and from an early age she felt she was ‘an anomaly’.

‘Moving from Zambia to Cornwall in the 1970s was an extraordinary experience. It was a mad contrast. The story of living in Penzance as the only black family would make a fabulous sitcom if there had been a little more humour,’ she says with a slightly rueful smile.

Thandie’s escape from being ‘the black, atheist kid in the all-white, Catholic school’ she attended in Cornwall came when she was 11 via a scholarship to study dance as a boarder at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts.

But at 16 her ambitions to become a dancer were crushed by a back injury and, ‘by fluke’, after her GCSEs she won a role in Flirting alongside Nicole Kidman (who remains a great friend) and Naomi Watts.

An innocent abroad (the film was shot in Australia), she was, she has said, ‘coerced’ into an ‘unhealthy’ relationship with the film’s director John Duigan, 23 years her senior. The affair went on for six years during which, she has said, she suffered from bulimia and intense feelings of shame.

Thandie has talked in the past (although she is anxious to talk about the future today) of other instances in which she was sexually objectified as a naive teenager.

They include a humiliating photo session and an incident when she was 18 – revealed to a journalist a while ago, but revisited recently in a CNN broadcast she gave to support One Billion Rising (the campaign to raise awareness of violence against women) – when a director subjected her to
a degrading screen test; she later discovered he replayed it to other showbusiness figures.

On the set of the new Olay Total Effects TV campaign

It is brave of Thandie to talk about the way she was ‘objectified’ during her teenage years (she believes that ‘empowering women is what I am here to do’) and it is impossible not to admire the way she emerged from that period as a victor rather than a victim.

In her early 20s she not only established herself as a serious actress, but also gained a degree in social anthropology at Cambridge.

‘But I still feel a need to communicate to other young women what happened to me. Because
I really do believe that negative experiences can very often be the absolute revelation in your life. Sometimes our instincts attract us to the wrong people – sometimes to someone who is abusive and who will make us feel bad about ourselves because our subconscious is telling us that is what we are looking for. Sometimes an abusive relationship can lead you to unwrap your pain because you are left so low you have to look into the core of who you are and that will lead you back to the cause of your issues and help you change,’ she says.

For Thandie, that change occurred in 1997 when she was starring in the BBC drama In Your Dreams and fell ‘madly in love’ with Ol Parker, who had written the screenplay.

When she talks about Ol, who she married in July 1998 (she was 25; he was three years older), her entire demeanour becomes softer and warmer. ‘Every relationship I have had has been my journey to Ol.

My husband is my best friend and he is the closest thing to a saint that I can think of – I don’t mean that he is a martyr, but he has this ability to rise to any difficulty and an openness to becoming a better person all the time.’

Their love and support for each other is inspiring; Thandie praises Ol not just as a husband and father, but also as a writer – describing his screenplay for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as ‘profound and beautiful’ – and passionately supporting Now is Good, a recent film (starring Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine) he directed and wrote the screenplay for. Meanwhile, on Twitter Ol reveals how proud he is of Thandie’s starring role in major new US TV series Rogue, and recently posted a picture of her with the caption ‘My f****** cool wife’.

Above: behind the scenes with Thandie and the crew on the set of the new Olay Total Effects TV campaign

Family life with their two daughters Ripley, 12 (named after the lead character in Alien), and Nico, eight (named after the late German actress and one-time singer with 60s band the Velvet Underground), comes first for both of them. Thandie tries to balance her career with that of her husband so that one parent is always present in their North London home and whenever possible – during school holidays – the children will accompany her when she is working (most recently travelling to Nigeria to shoot Half of a Yellow Sun, based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s cult novel, which is due for release later this year).

For Thandie giving birth – at home with no pain relief – was empowering and she relishes every moment of motherhood. ‘My children are amazing.

All children are just blinking gorgeous and we are so lucky to participate in their life every day. I resent school because it takes up too much of their time,’ she says.

When I compliment her on the gold ‘Mummy’ chain round her neck she raises her arm to touch it, revealing a perfectly drawn Yin/Yang symbol just below her elbow. ‘Nico drew this a couple of nights ago with a Sharpie. She said, “Hold still, Mummy,” and when I saw what she had drawn I loved it. I don’t want to wash it off,’ she says.

NEWTON'S LORE

What’s on your iPod?
I’m mad for Monsta’s ‘Holdin’ On’. Other faves right now are Cold Specks, The Black Keys,
TV On The Radio and Atoms For Peace.

Favourite app?
I have a BlackBerry but I don’t have apps and
I don’t use social media.

Women who have inspired you?
Playwright Eve Ensler. I met her years ago when I took part in a charity performance of her play The Vagina Monologues. Eve is evidence that you can turn pain into power.

Olay Total Effects Moisturiser + Serum Duo

Can’t leave home without?
First applying my Olay Total Effects Moisturiser + Serum Duo [£16.99]. Then I’m done for the day.

Best books?
My nutrition bible is Eat Yourself Young by Elizabeth Peyton-Jones and I’m currently reading Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon, about the search for identity.

Favourite film?
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which Ol wrote. I’m so proud of him; Marigold was a huge chapter in our lives.

Must-have jewellery?
I wear the ring that Ol gave me after Nico
was born, engraved with the girls’ names.
On my other hand I wear a ring that Solange
Azagury-Partridge — an amazing designer — gave me for my birthday and underneath it a gold ring my father gave me when I was 11.

Go-to designers?
I loved my Giles dress for the Golden Globes.
I am a fan of Jonathan Saunders, Peter Pilotto, Erdem and Stella McCartney, and also Jess Collett for hats.

Your hairdresser?
I never go to the hairdresser! I do it myself at home. I learned to be very good with my hair growing up in Cornwall where there was nothing for Afro hair. No wonder I relaxed it as soon as I could. I don’t relax any more: I either blow-dry it or keep it natural. My essential products are Aveda, John Masters Organics and a line called I Love Afro, which has a yummy honey smell.

Exercise regime?
I love yoga — I go to Jivamukti Yoga in London. And I have a trainer, Liston Wingate-Denys
at Hybrid Wellbeing, who trained me in Krav Maga, a self-defence system, for my role in Rogue. It took my confidence and fitness to a whole other level.

Thandie has an extensive knowledge of the rights and wrongs of parenting (acquired through her
own therapy and by reading books and studying research into child development) and has concluded that what children fear most in life is disappointing their parents.

‘I try to make sure that I apologise to them if I have snapped at them and explain to them that my being in a bad mood had nothing to do with them. The worrying thing is that sometimes your children can think they have disappointed you even when you have done nothing to create that feeling.’

Does she worry, I ask, that having to live up to such a beautiful, successful and brilliant mother might create that feeling in her daughters when they are older? ‘No, because I am also the person to whom my kids already say, “Mum, you are so annoying,”’ she says with a grin.

But then Thandie seems almost oblivious to her own beauty (which might explain her teenage vulnerability) and displays no signs of vanity.

She enjoys the creative process of making- and dressing-up for photographs or the red carpet, but she hates shopping and is ‘low maintenance. My beauty routine has to be simple, speedy and effective.

Which is why I love the new Olay Total Effects Moisturiser + Serum Duo because it contains everything I need to keep my skin looking and feeling good. I can apply it in seconds on the busiest days when I am doing the school run or have an early morning meeting and I am done! Perfect.’

We talk about the pressure put on girls – at ever younger ages – to care more about how they look than what they can achieve and how to counteract the influence of their peer group.

‘Ol and I have always talked about our girls’ strengths, not their beauty. And anyway I don’t buy into the idea of stereotypes of what is “beautiful”. Nico is blonde and Ripley has darker hair and skin tone and in one country it will be, “Nico, look at her” and then we go to another country – as happened recently in Nigeria where I was working on Half of a Yellow Sun – and Nico is ignored and Rip is the focus of attention: “Oh, she is so beautiful.” It’s all about perceptions,’ she says.

Thandie retains a close relationship with her parents who now live ‘round the corner’ and are proactive grandparents. She has, she says, inherited her love of practical jokes from her father (her serious side, she says, often masks the fact that she is ‘the silliest person alive’) and she is ‘very different’ from, but very close to, her mother. Her brother Jamie, who has just had a baby with his ‘beautiful fiancé Freda’, is her hero (‘I love him’).

Maintaining a balance between the work that fulfils her and the family she adores is her main priority. TV, she believes, is now the most challenging medium for actors and she is excited by the predicted success of the ten-part thriller Rogue – in which she plays the central character of Grace, an undercover detective – which premieres in the US next month, and will almost certainly go on to a second series. ‘The characters are so strong and the writing so good that it could run for season after season.

But we shoot in Vancouver during the summer when the girls are on holiday so it doesn’t involve long separations,’ she says, pausing for a second before adding, ‘so family can still come first.’

Thandie is the face of Olay Total Effects range, available nationwide. For more information visit
olay.co.uk. Olay Total Effects Moisturiser + Serum Duo, £16.99 for 40m

KATCHING MY I

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Saturday, 23 March 2013

As a teenage actress, Thandie Newton battled bulimia and exploitation, but now combines domestic bliss with superstardom

Totally Thandie: As a teenage actress, Thandie Newton battled bulimia and exploitation, but now combines domestic bliss with superstardom

NEWTON'S LORE