Fallout star Ella Purnell has opened up about the moment she made the “scary” decision to refuse to do nude scenes and how she almost stopped acting altogether to avoid being sexualised on screen.
The 27-year-old London-born actress, who began her career as a child, revealed she started setting boundaries when she was just a teenager, swearing off nudity and romance stories during a candid conversation with her agent.
It was a choice she felt compelled to make shortly after having an unsettling first kiss on a film set when she was just 15 or 16.
The idea of becoming a sex object even made Purnell consider quitting acting for good five years later, at the age of 21.
But now Purnell has admitted it was not a decision he took lightly.
Ella Purnell has revealed she gave up nudity and romance early in her career after a heart-to-heart with her agent.
The 27-year-old British actress plays “vault dweller” Lucy MacLean in the hit Amazon Prime series Fallout, which premiered in April.
“Realizing that I don’t want to do nudity, or I don’t want to do a love story, and feeling a little bit embarrassed because I think: am I less of an actress or less of a professional?” she said.
“But having my agent really validate my feelings and say, ‘No, it’s OK to not feel comfortable doing this or that.'”
‘My first kiss was on screen in a movie and I think it took me a couple of years to accept it and say, “No, I think I need to take a break.”
“And having someone who values that opinion and preference is really empowering for a child actor.”
Purnell said he was concerned that his stance could cost him his job.
‘You have to keep working because you never know when you’re going to get your next job and what if I never work again?
‘If I start saying no to things, I’m not going to get hired again, and that’s terrifying.
‘It’s really hard to know your worth and say, ‘Actually no, I don’t want to do that job because I want to do this instead.’
“It’s difficult for any self-employed person, and for women too. It’s sometimes difficult to get by in this sector.”
She now stars as “vault dweller” Lucy MacLean in the hit Amazon Prime series Fallout, which premiered in April and is based on the video game series.
The drama, set in a post-nuclear-apocalyptic Los Angeles, is the most-streamed original show this year, reaching more than 34 million subscriber accounts.
Purnell’s television credits include her role as Jackie Taylor on the Showtime series Yellowjackets.
The actress began her career as a child, playing the younger version of Keira Knightley’s character in the 2010 film Never Let Me Go.
Purnell and her former co-star Keira Knightley attended the 2016 Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards
It did so well that it increased Amazon’s daily viewing figures by eight percent, with 80 percent of viewers watching the series in just five days.
So it’s no surprise that Ella, who also played a tragedy-plagued teenager on the Showtime survival drama Yellowjackets, is being touted as the next big star.
Along with two thirty-somethings, House of the Dragon’s Olivia Cooke and White Lotus’ Aimee Lou Wood, she is part of a new trio of female stars who have the industry at their feet.
Sky’s production director Cécile Frot-Coutaz said: “Over the past year it’s been fantastic to see a new wave of young British actresses leading the charge in Hollywood.”
She attended the Sylvia Young Drama School in London when she was nine, having filmed her first commercial a year earlier.
She doesn’t name the film in which she experienced her first kiss, but contenders include 2014’s Maleficent, for which she was cast as a young Angelina Jolie, 49.
Earlier in her career, she also played the younger version of Margot Robbie’s character in the 2016 adventure film The Legend of Tarzan and the 39-year-old Keira Knightley in the 2010 romantic drama thriller Never Let Me Go.
Speaking on the Collider Ladies Night podcast, she said: ‘It’s funny because with young Margot and young Angelina, (my role) is not in the movie.
‘Either they cut it or I was his body double, as I was for young Margot.
‘But everything happens for a reason and I think this happened so I could learn.
‘You’re literally taking a young actor who’s a little bit aimless and saying, ‘Imitate this professional, successful, beautiful, talented person, watch her and learn from her.’
Incredibly, it wasn’t until she was 18 and landed a role in Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children that she began to take acting seriously.
Was Angelina Jolie’s 2014 film Maleficent the movie in which Ella experienced her first kiss?
Co-stars Kyle MacLachlan, Aaron Moten, Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins and Xelia Mendes-Jones attend the Fallout UK special screening in London in April.
The drama, set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic Los Angeles, is the most-streamed original show this year, reaching more than 34 million Amazon Prime subscribers.
She said: “I don’t think I really knew I wanted to be an actress. It certainly wasn’t a dream of mine. It was more of a curiosity.”
‘When I was a kid I loved watching movies. I saw Spy Kids (the movie) and I thought they were the best. My childhood best friend and I played spy games.
‘I was the girly girl and she was the tomboy and we had all these gadgets, imaginary gadgets.
“But I guess I never thought of acting as a long-term career. It was always something I did now, and I don’t think kids are capable of thinking that far into the future.
“I was 18 when I got the part in the Tim Burton movie and I loved it as a kid and watched all of his movies religiously. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m actually going to be in a Tim Burton movie.'”
“I didn’t think that was possible for someone like me. On set, experiencing so many things for the first time.
“It was a heart-stopping moment. I had no idea how it had happened and I thought: Wow! How cheesy! But dreams do come true!”
But at the age of 21 she experienced her first serious setback that almost led her to give up acting forever.
She was worried about being pigeonholed as a sex object and wanted to go to college like her high school friends.
But she decided to persevere when she won the lead role in the 2018 TV series Sweetbitter, in which she agreed to a brief nude scene, removing her towel to expose her upper half in a sauna.
The part, in which the main character, Tess, learned to let go of her inhibitions, reflected what was happening in real life.
She said: ‘When I did Sweetbitter, it was my first time doing television.
Purnell had considered quitting acting at age 21, after dealing with the prospect of being typecast as a “sex object,” before landing the lead role of Tess on the Starz show Sweetbitter in 2018.
She agreed to do a brief nude scene in the series in which her character exposed her breasts in the sauna, as well as some passionate but gentle love scenes.
‘It was my first time working in the United States, doing an American accent, living in the United States.
‘I was living in Williamsburg and I was very lucky and met four fantastic girlfriends who weren’t in film or television, I met them through a friend.
‘They became my best friends. I met them very early on, I didn’t know anything about the city or the United States and they introduced me to New York and it was crazy.
“I found my Sex and the City crew. I thought I was living my dream. I couldn’t believe it.”
She later moved to Los Angeles to film Yellowjackets and appears to have settled there having moved in with her musician boyfriend Max Bennett Kelly and their pet dog.
With 1.2 million followers on Instagram, Ella is already being touted as the UK’s answer to 26-year-old actress Sydney Sweeney. But she’s still not sure whether the industry is her first priority.
She said: ‘The other day I was asked: ‘Do you think you’ve made it?’
‘It was a question that really made me think.
“What is it? What did it do?” It’s a personal definition.
‘For some it could mean winning an Oscar.
‘For me, my life has been crazy and there’s been a lack of stability and you have to redefine what happiness means to you.
‘When I was younger, I thought that was professional success and now I think of it as a balance.
«Of course I want to be successful.
‘But for me success is not about being rich or famous or having awards.
‘It’s work that I’m proud of and that challenges me, and if I can find a way to do that and balance it with family and friends and richness in my life that’s not just my job, that’s fulfilling.
“But maybe in a year I’ll be competing for an Oscar and that’ll be all that matters to me.”