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Phoebe Dynevor
She captured hearts as leading lady Daphne in Bridgerton, but PHOEBE DYNEVOR is far from the Regency ballrooms that made her a household name. From gritty, globe-trotting thrillers to a dark, ’90s nostalgia project with Zac Efron, the actor is carving a career defined by multi-dimensional roles. She talks to ALESSANDRA CODINHA about navigating Hollywood chaos, her love for complex characters, and what she’s learned from rejection
It would be easy to imagine that Phoebe Dynevor simply emerged from the ether to conquer our screens as a doe-eyed debutante in Netflix’s gargantuan hit Bridgerton back in 2020. But the 29-year-old actor – who is buttoned-up in a barn coat and Dôen cardigan when we meet for coffee in Los Angeles, her glowing complexion belying the fact she was up until the early hours shooting a new project with Zac Efron – reminds me that, actually, she has been working since she was a teenager.
“I think that happens a lot with actors,” she says. “I read Paul Mescal talking about it recently, in regard to [his breakout role in] Normal People. Most people are [working for a long time] in this industry. Unless, I guess, you’re a child actor and it happens overnight, then it happens overnight.” For everyone else, there are the usual years of training and trials and triumphs, with the occasional happy success story like hers to spur and inspire: taking a chance on a new show (historically fuzzy, Regency-era, love-scene-heavy fantasy with a diverse cast) that becomes a bona-fide career-making sensation.
“I think it’s really healthy to have a lot of rejection,” Dynevor says of the start of her career. “I think you have to fight for something to feel ready for it… I think I felt ready for the chaos as best I could.”
“I want to see the WOMEN that my girlfriends are, that my mum is, that women in my LIFE portray. I don’t want a one-dimensional, IDEALIZED female part”
She had plenty of family support: her mother, Sally Dynevor, has been an actor nearly her entire life, including as a cast member on the UK soap opera Coronation Street for almost 40 years. Her uncle was a producer, and her grandmother worked as an assistant director, “a runner”, Dynevor says, “well into her fifties, and she was an actress, too. Everyone had a small or big part in the industry in my family, and I just kind of knew I wanted to be in this somehow.” She is well in it now, bridging her breakout success in Bridgerton with a host of wildly different projects.
Her next movie, Inheritance, is a hemisphere-hopping espionage thriller by Neil Burger that co-stars Rhys Ifans, and premieres in late January. The plot follows Dynevor’s character, Maya, who spirals out of control after her mother dies and then reconnects with her long-absent father (Ifans) – revealed to be a spy who needs her help with one last assignment. It was shot on location in New York, Cairo, Delhi and Seoul across two months, entirely on iPhones. This gives a palpable sense of urgency and momentum, and lends itself to the ticking clock of the plot: you’re bustled along with Dynevor’s character as she shoplifts a bottle of tequila from a store in Times Square and knocks it back on a street corner, evades pursuers on the back of a motorbike taxi in Delhi, passes border control in the airport, or paces fretfully waiting to board a plane.
“I thought I was going to be arrested in New York, with the bottle,” Dynevor insists, adding that they were really shooting on the plane, and at the airport, on the run, on the fly. Those were real passengers on their flight boarding around them. Those are really their seats on the plane. “There was no camera setup, there was no lighting. It was literally, like, ‘OK, we’re filming, go, run, go steal those sunglasses.’ It was all so real. I felt so alive the whole time.”
Now shooting A24’s Famous with Zac Efron, she’s been readjusting to the more established style of movie-making, where it takes an hour to set up the cameras for a scene seated around a table. She’s particularly enjoying the 1990s nostalgia that comes from the decade the film – a thriller about the dark side of celebrity – is set in. “I’m listening to so much ’90s music, which is fun. And the clothes are so cool. I’m wearing these low-waisted jeans that are, like, underneath my hip bone. I understand now why everyone had the butterfly, the back tattoo,” she laughs.
It would seem like there’s a leap between Bridgerton’s corsets and the type of roles and projects she’s leaned into since – a successful investment banker with a complicated personal life in 2023’s critically lauded Fair Play, a jaded and flailing twentysomething in Inheritance, and an upcoming shark-centered thriller by Tommy Wirkola called Beneath the Storm, among them – but they’re more alike than you might think, she says. “I mean, it goes back to playing [Bridgerton’s] Daphne. I loved that character so much, because she was still complicated. She wasn’t just this young, innocent flower. She did some stuff that wasn’t right, and she was a complex character. I’m always looking for that. I’m always excited when I find that in a role.”
“I know this is such a general answer, but in this industry, especially for women, to find that is very important. I want to see the women that my girlfriends are, that my mum is, that women in my life portray. I don’t want a one-dimensional, idealized female part.”
Those parts still aren’t as thick on the ground as one might hope, though. Even in the creator-founded world of digital content, Dynevor points out, women are usually falling into one narrow identity or the other. “Women are actually self-writing themselves on TikTok, and you see it’s kind of the idealized, stay-at-home-cooking mother versus, you know, the messy… It’s funny that those things are now being so polarized in content, too,” she says. “Like, we’re all both of those things.”
“I feel like EVERYTHING I watched as a teenager was ROMANCE and romcoms, and I think we’ve gone through a DROUGHT of that, in a way”
As a viewer, she prefers watching classic films, where it feels like the performers are making bold, singular choices. In so many performances today, she says, it feels like everyone is doing the same thing. “I think it’s so important to look back and watch old movies, listen to old music and keep expanding your view of the world.” She pauses. It’s been a strange, tumultuous time – globally, certainly – to take in the view. “I do worry about the state of the world right now and if it’s going to keep going in the direction that we, I think, want it to go,” she says. “But also, this is when the best art comes about.”
What art would she like to make next? She loves theater and has yet to perform professionally, but maybe more likely back in the UK, where the stage opportunities are far more robust than in LA and where she and her fiancé, producer Cameron Fuller, want to spend some of their time. She plans to keep popping up onscreen in the UK, too. “I love the British film industry. It’s been such an important part of my life and I always want to keep working there.”
When it comes to her future in film, she’s drawn to producing more than writing or directing. “I like controlling all the elements,” she says. “Also, I could find a better writer than me, so producing is the thing that I’m excited about right now. As long as the industry keeps growing in a good way, then I will always want to keep acting.” Genre-wise, perhaps a romcom. “When I was growing up, I feel like everything I watched as a teenager was romance and romcoms,” she says, “and I think we’ve gone through a drought of that, in a way.” Or maybe an action movie; something that requires a safety harness and a ferocious high kick. “I’d love to do something like that.”
Dynevor’s learned a thing or two about ferocity from fashion, actually. She may prefer upscale-casual, “quiet-luxury” pieces in her downtime, seeking out new brands online (“I heard about Dôen from a post by Sofia Richie”), but on the red carpet she has found herself inspired to try cool, bolder choices: “When I wear a dress, [it’s] not so dainty anymore.”
“I mean, I DON’T think I’m a WORKAHOLIC anymore”
In their daily life, she and Fuller tend to be low-key, preferring to have friends over to their house to fire up the grill, play games and listen to music rather than going out on the town. “There is also my new favorite thing,” she says: “the 5:30pm dinner reservation.” This means she’s a real Los Angelean, I tell her; nobody prizes their sleep and digestion quite like a local (be they newly adopted or native). We part ways – she’s making plans to survey the restaurant’s cheese selection to bring some home for dinner that night. “I mean, I don’t think I’m a workaholic anymore,” she says of her work-life balance. “I used to be. But life is too precious.”
Inheritance is in movie theaters from January 24
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