In the Marvel films, British bombshell Peggy Carter needs no super powers to vanquish her enemies. But Hayley Atwell, the 37-year-old English actress who plays her in the most lucrative franchise ever made, certainly seems to possess something special.

When we meet, Atwell has just endured two and a half hours of emotional torment as the tragic heroine in a new West End production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm. Yet here she is signing autographs for fans at the stage door, wide-eyed and fresh as a sea breeze, looking as if she’s all set for a day’s work. Surely that’s a super power?

“I’ve never felt so energetic,” she tells me as she leads me to her dressing room in the Duke of York’s Theatre. “I think it has a lot to do with having experienced adversity. You know, moments of failure in my career. But then, once you’ve been around the block you can let go of the person you think you’re supposed to be. My friends in their thirties and forties are much happier now because of that. I mean, there was a reckless thrill when you were younger of working s— out and making horrendous mistakes, but now I feel I am driving my own life.”

If Atwell’s CV contains such mistakes, they are overwhelmed by her successes: an enviable combination of high-end television adaptations, a prolific stage career and, of course, the Avengers films and her own Netflix spin-off, Agent Carter.

To her performances, Atwell brings both a crisp-vowelled Blitz spirit and a forceful modernity, a contrast that has served her well in some of her biggest period drama roles – as the progressive Margaret Schlegel in the 2017 BBC adaptation of Howards End, and as Julia Flyte in the big-screen version of Brideshead Revisited (2008).

Hayley Atwell attends the press night curtain call and after party for “Rosmersholm” on May 2, 2019 in London. You can go to the gallery to take a look to the photos.

Hayley Atwell spent hours in a huge water tank with co-star Tom Burke for her return to the stage.

The pair star in the West End premiere of Duncan Macmillan’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, at the Duke of York’s Theatre. A dramatic publicity shot released today shows the two submerged in water as characters Rebecca West and John Rosmer.

Agent Carter star Atwell said the shoot was one of the most surreal moments of her career, telling the Standard: “We filmed it in Croydon in a studio that has done everything from a Björk music video to Harry Potter.

“We spent the whole day underwater, coming up with these individual shots. Ian [Rickson] was directing it and we would come up for air and receive different instructions each time.

“He would say: ‘All right, now look as though you’ve found inner peace with each other’ or ‘Now look as though you are twins in the womb’. We were just underwater trying to get these shots without laughing.

“For the final shot, I was standing on one of the professional divers as he lay across the bottom of the water tank. I felt terrible for him so I glanced down — he had an underwater phone and was just lying there texting away! It was one of the most surreal moments I’ve had.”

Burke, who has starred in the BBC’s Strike as well as War And Peace, added: “It felt like a baptism at the beginning of the job. It’s a good way to equate yourself with another person.”

He said: “The play’s mystery is one of its great strengths. It doesn’t have a singular message. I like that it is about people trying to find the point of politics, the truth of the moment.” [Source]

Rosmersholm is at the Duke of York’s Theatre from April 24 to July 20

Hayley Atwell is set to return to the West End for a new production of Rosmersholm.

The Howard’s End star will take on the role of Rebecca West in Ibsen’s 1886 play, with Tom Burke taking on the role of John Rosmer.

Set amid a time of political unrest just before an election is due to take place, it centres on clergyman Rosmer’s struggle to fight to become a radicalist as he battles with his family’s privileged history.

It will be reimagined in a new adaptation by Duncan Macmillan, whose acclaimed previous plays include People, Places and Things and 1984.

It will be directed by Ian Rickson, who was nominated for Best Director at last year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his revival of Translations.

Atwell’s recent stage credits include Measure for Measure at the Donmar and Dry Powder at Hampstead Theatre.

Burke starred in The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre in 2016, and recently starred as Cormoran Strike in a TV adaptation of JK Rowling’s Robert Galbraith novels.

Rosmersholm will run at the Duke of York’s Theatre from April 24 – July 20. [Source]

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“I’m doing things that go against my instincts as a person”

Hayley Atwell admitted that she felt “disgusting” playing such an execrable character in BBC One’s adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel The Long Song, but that made it all the more important to inject “humanity” into the role.

The 36-year-old Agent Carter star plays Caroline Mortimer – a mistress who wields her power and status over a slave she plucks from her mother as a young child called July [played by Tamara Lawrance] during the final days of slavery in 19th century Jamaica.

Atwell says it would have been “reductive to play Caroline as a monster” and instead wanted to explore why Caroline did what she did, and what damage her systematic cruelty upon others ultimately did to her own soul.

“Caroline is so against my own value system and my own understanding but that was all the more reason that I wanted to put humanity in her,” the actress told Harper’s Bazaar UK at a screening for the series.

“Because it would be reductive to play her as a monster. That doesn’t give us anything, it doesn’t help us with the complex, intelligent question or conversation around it. I felt disgusting, and I felt gross but then I thought that’s how I’m meant to feel. I’m doing things going that against my instincts as a person.”

Atwell continued that Caroline didn’t really have much power or authority – despite being a sister of a plantation owner – and that her bullying behaviour is down to her own “insecurity and cowardice”

“Caroline has nothing that gives her any independent identity…. She gets a sense that the slaves are smarter than she is, and they know something about her that she doesn’t know about herself and therein lies how pathetic and almost endearing and awful she is,” she explained.

“It’s very textbook, I think, that bullying that comes from insecurity and cowardice, and where she tries to assert this authority that she doesn’t really have. I wanted to explore the psychological damage or the damage done to one’s psyche, when that person inflicts damage on someone else you think, ‘I bet she can’t live in her one skin’. She’s crawling in self-loathing.”

Hayley Atwell attends a photocall for BBC One’s ‘The Long Song’ at Soho Hotel on December 11, 2018 in London. You can go to the gallery to take a look to the photos.