Elizabeth recently did an interview with The Guardian newspaper, which also included a photoshoot. I have added the images to the gallery, and below is a snippet of the interview.
A number of competing bars have been built into the outer bulwark of the National Theatre in London, and when she emerges from rehearsals one night in September the Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki – animated, adamant, 6ft 3in – hesitates. Which bar? We circle the building together, scouting options, dismissing one place for being too quiet, another too busy. Debicki has heard a rumour about a secret actors’ drinking den hidden deep within the theatre complex. Finally, we wind up back at the quiet place, where she orders a glass of red wine. “I love that in England the choice is only ever ‘medium’ or ‘large’,” the 26-year-old says, taking a swig. Then again, she adds, who is she to talk. “In Australia, we fill swimming pools with this stuff.”
Chatting at the bar, I can understand why, whenever Debicki does a job (playing a warlord’s mistress in The Night Manager, opposite Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston, a party girl in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, or an alien in the upcoming superhero sequel, Guardians Of The Galaxy) she is affectionately known as “Debicki” on set. “My first name never lasts longer than five minutes.” There is an unstuffy and clownish energy to this actor, who doesn’t like to let a sentence rest if there’s a quip to be added and who, when she talks, waves her hands about as if she’s drowning. She chews gum and fiddles constantly with her short, bleached hair, now tugging it upright, now flattening it sideways. Her exuberance might be amplified by the fact that she’s only just been let loose from a rehearsal room after nine hours’ work on a new play, but Debicki says she’s always had “an ingrained intensity, a little bit of madness”, and she puts this down to her ancestry: Polish on her father’s side, Irish on her mother’s. When I ask about the most tiring part of rehearsing, Debicki flattens her hair to one side and says, “It’s a David Hare play. The words.”
There’s not a lot more she can say about the production, she says, beyond the fact that it’s called The Red Barn, is set in 1960s New England and co-stars Mark Strong – a “psychological thriller with Hitchcockian elements”. I ask if she can give me a little preview of her New England accent. “No. Noooo. No way.” The hair gets dragged into clown-like puffs. “No.” Debicki has signed a number of non-disclosure agreements recently, she explains, mostly related to her work on Guardians Of The Galaxy, and this has made her paranoid about saying anything about anything. “You start to worry there are snipers on the tops of nearby buildings.”
Read the rest of the article here. It makes for a very interesting read, especially learning more about Elizabeth herself!
