Hayley Atwell on Tom Cruise, and speaking up in Hollywood

One would possibly assume, as a lady in Hollywood, that Hayley Atwell is sick of being requested about Mission: Inconceivable co-star Tom Cruise, who she’s labored with now for over 5 years. However when the inevitable query is requested, she appears genuinely keen on him, at the very least from what I can glean from our Zoom interview (her digital camera stays firmly off for everything). “I think I’ve taught him over time that I’m a friend to him,” she says, a smile creeping into her voice.

“He’s met my family, and I’ve met his, and he creates a really wholesome environment for his actors to work in … he values me as a friend and I think that comes from my respect for him as a person. He is a very mild-mannered, polite gentleman, in that old-school Hollywood way. Kind of like Paul Newman for me.”

Atwell is talking from her dwelling metropolis of London, and her voice is hoarse – she’s simply wrapped the marathon run of a West Finish manufacturing of A lot Ado About Nothing, taking part in Beatrice to Tom Hiddleston’s Benedick – and he or she speaks with a slight lisp not obvious on display screen. However Atwell, 43, isn’t right here to speak about theatre. She’s right here to speak about Mission: Inconceivable – The Closing Reckoning, the second instalment of the most recent reboot of the motion franchise.

It was within the first instalment, Mission: Inconceivable – Useless Reckoning, launched in 2023, that audiences met Atwell’s character Grace, a free-spirited pickpocket finally persuaded by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to hitch the Inconceivable Missions Drive.

Each Mission: Inconceivable and the action-spy style at giant have traditionally had a fraught relationship with their feminine characters, who are sometimes relegated to stale stereotypes just like the damsel in misery or intercourse image. As Grace, Atwell is crafty, gutsy and completely charming – not in contrast to the actor herself. With a wardrobe heavy on pantsuits and notably missing in ballgowns, Grace is rarely a damsel and solely sometimes distressed.

“I would consider myself an alpha woman,” she says. “I’ve always been very strong. I’ve always had a very strong sense of who I am. I can’t even work out how to get into the beginnings of why that is. It’s just partly how I’m built.”

This self-given moniker, “alpha woman”, is becoming for somebody who’s maintained each a gentle professionalism and fierce outspokenness all through her profession. Atwell has been notably vocal in regards to the pressures younger girls in Hollywood face to look a sure means – together with a comment about her weight on the set of Brideshead Revisited which was initially attributed to producer Harvey Weinstein however which she has since stated was made by somebody from the crew.

Definitely, it appears this headstrong spirit is what drew Cruise (who can be a producer on the Mission: Inconceivable franchise) and director Christopher McQuarrie (who Atwell refers to affectionately as “McQ”) to solid her. “I love the company of alpha men,” says Atwell, citing various “alphas” she’s labored with beforehand, together with Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Simon Russell Beale. “From the moment I met Tom and McQ, I discovered they also really love and value strong women.”

Atwell praises the liberty the pair, who’re identified for letting actors improvise, gave her to make Grace her personal. “I find it very exciting because with Mission, if I didn’t come up with any ideas on any given day, then I would appear in the scenes as just another brunette. It really was up to me to keep moving forward and keep pushing, and keep being present to Tom.”

Like Cruise, infamous for his dedication to carry out his personal stunts, nevertheless harmful, Atwell was equally sport for the bodily challenges the function demanded. However it’s the quiet moments, away from the high-octane automotive chases and scuba diving in freezing water, that actually stick along with her.

She recounts a very emotional second whereas taking pictures The Closing Reckoning in Svalbard, an archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole. “There was this incredible sight of a polar bear walking very slowly, calmly towards our ship. It looked well fed, thankfully, but we were very aware that we were in its territory. So there was this sense of absolutely respecting its space and its privacy. We were able to experience this mighty beast in its home. It was very awe-inspiring.”

Atwell grew up in London the place she was raised by single mom, Allison Cain, a motivational speaker. They didn’t develop up with cash, however she says her childhood, surrounded by the beating coronary heart of London’s arts scene, was a cheerful one. Her father Grant, an American photographer, stayed within the image, taking his daughter travelling throughout a spot yr after highschool.

Whereas she says her starvation to carry out began younger, she nearly didn’t pursue performing. Atwell obtained a conditional provide to check philosophy and theology at Oxford College, however purposely flunked her ultimate exams – one thing she doesn’t remorse to this present day.

Appearing has introduced her into contact with all method of individuals – from archbishops to students – who greater than fulfill her curious spirit. “It means that I’m immediately collaborating with them for a specific reason that fuels my own creativity rather than studying what they have to say from an academic point of view. I feel like I am a student every single day, and I’ll never graduate.”

After ending her research on the Guildhall College of Music & Drama in 2005, Atwell began her profession in theatre earlier than making the transition to the display screen with a breakout function in Woody Allen’s 2007 movie Cassandra’s Dream (in 2018, Atwell spoke out about her poor on-set relationship with Allen, vowing by no means to work with him once more).

A collection of roles in movies together with Brideshead Revisited and The Duchess adopted, incomes Atwell the title “queen of period drama”. Her latest look in Mission: Inconceivable, alongside a recurring function as Agent Peggy Carter within the Marvel cinematic universe, would possibly lead audiences so as to add motion star to period-drama heroine.

However a more in-depth take a look at her CV reveals a genre-defying profession, together with an emotional function in an episode of the sci-fi collection Black Mirror and a visitor look on one other UK TV collection, Heartstopper, she’s notably keen about. “There were a couple of lines in the script where I just felt like: ‘Yes, I want to say those lines. That feels like a beautiful moment and I would like to experience that with that actor in that show.’”

All through her profession, Atwell has remained fiercely protecting of her private life. She turned engaged to music producer Ned Wolfgang Kelly in 2023 and gave start to their baby final yr – two milestones she has little curiosity in discussing, besides to say she stays “stubbornly myself, and very close to my family and friends from childhood”.

Regardless of her non-public nature, Atwell is keen on speaking about self-love and its energy in an business identified to be notably merciless to girls. In a latest look on the podcast Reign with Josh Smith, she commented on this notion, referring to a journalist who as soon as wrote “Hayley Atwell comes across like a self-help book”.

I ask her how she maintains such hope and optimism. “If someone was cruel to me, that doesn’t mean I have to be cruel back. When I walk into a room, particularly a working environment, I go, ‘It’s my responsibility how I show up and what I partake in and what I comment on.’ And if someone gossips, it’s my responsibility to not gossip back. The minute I do, I’m part of the problem.

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“I understand that as a deep sense of individual responsibility to shape the conversation I’m having. I want it to come from a place of professionalism, kindness and belief in what art can do to bring us together, to unite us and to help us understand differences. But there are also many things that are beyond my control and I really understand what’s not within my power.”

If Atwell has earned the belief and ear of Cruise as each co-star and good friend, then being within the orbit of one of many best-known males in Hollywood has dramatically shifted her relationship with fame. Or, moderately, her distaste for it. “It’s not my business what people think of me,” she says firmly. “There’s nothing I can do about it.

“Of course, that’s the power of charismatic actors – you can feel what they feel. You’ll certainly feel a connection to the stories they’re telling. But we’re talking about that going into delusion if there is an assumption that, because we’ve seen this person on the big screen, we have any right to have any sort of relationship with them in real life.”

Mission: Inconceivable – The Closing Reckoning is launched Might 22.

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