Jodie Comer Is Hollywood’s Next Great Chameleon

Few things can establish an actor’s chops—or forged doubt on them—as quickly as a multiple persona role. The maximum well-known instance, of route, is Sally Field earning her spot high inside the popular culture firmament (and a Best Actress Emmy) for her portrayal of the 13 other personalities contained in the female at the middle of the 1976 TV film Sybil. Think additionally of the kick back you felt whilst Edward Norton suddenly shifted from candy, stuttering altar boy to vulgar, manipulative murderer on the end of Primal Fear. It turned into Norton’s first film, and his first Oscar nomination.
Villanelle, the chameleonic Russian murderer at the center of the addictive BBC collection Killing Eve, is arguably that kind of function for the huge-eyed 26-12 months-old Liverpudlian Jodie Comer. Each mission Villanelle takes on comes with a new hide designed to get her near her goal: She morphs from Italian celebration guest to aspiring French parfumier to Slavic intercourse spa employee. But Villanelle and Comer do tons more than wear wigs and costumes (though each actress and man or woman do savour that a part of it).

Each episode is a delicious kamikaze undertaking of new accents and ­mannerisms—of totally new personas. “That’s how I regarded Villanelle at the begin—as an actress of types,” Comer says. “The way she prepares for her jobs, how she takes them very significantly and is pleased with her paintings and receives off on seeing human beings be convinced through her guise and her attraction.”

Indeed, Comer’s masterful portrayal of Villanelle’s masterful portrayals—and of Villanelle’s between-jobs persona, which is itself titillatingly complicated—is incomes her award nominations and fawning headlines like “Why Jodie Comer merits a Golden Globe (in five GIFs).”
“It’s highly worrying,” says her co-superstar Sandra Oh, who performs the MI6 agent on Villanelle’s trail, of Comer’s role. “There’s the preventing, the accents, the languages. It’s not like a film in which you put together for a yr and then you definately recognize Russian flawlessly. We get new scripts, and she goes, ‘Oh, gotta speak French.’ I’d be very difficult-pressed to do a number of the matters Jodie does. She turned into born with an uncanny ear, and he or she just has exquisite innate skills. She travels at light pace.”

So, in brief, Comer, whose previous work includes lauded turns inside the BBC’s Thirteen and Starz’s The White Princess, is quick emerging as one of the most proficient actors of her technology. That stated, the real motive I’m talking to her is her pores and skin.
When I watched the primary season of Killing Eve last spring, I changed into of route mesmerized by using her performance and her tantalizing pas de deux with Oh. But I was equally transfixed via her ideal porcelain complexion. It’s like the love toddler of milk and glass. It come what may stays embryonically lineless whilst Comer contorts her face into all types of goofy and extreme expressions. And it seems I become no longer the simplest one so obsessed: Several guides have dedicated memories to her merchandise and eating regimen that allows you to suss out the secret. (Hint: It includes sunscreen and being 26. And a celeb facialist).

But then a funny aspect occurred: I rewatched season certainly one of Killing Eve earlier than meeting Comer, and this time I turned into struck now not by her splendor but by how willing she is to be now not lovely. To be messy and coarse and unfeminine. There is a complete lack of conceitedness in the performance. Comer has a face she could dine out on for decades, but that’s really not her rationale. It in no way became.
“I lately requested my mom if she ever thought I’d emerge as doing this professionally, and she or he stated no,” Comer says. “I didn’t honestly visit a local drama college till I became maybe eleven. But as a baby I become constantly doing impressions—of Cilla Black, of the singer Anastacia. I was very extroverted, very in contact with my feelings. I loved to talk, and I turned into likely a piece of a nuisance in the school room because I in no way close up.”