Vanity Fair star Olivia Cooke reveals how a director told her to lose weight at 18 — and denied her a cookie
Vanity Fair star Olivia Cooke has shared how a television director told her that lose weight for a part when she was a slim teenager.
The actress, who is about to star in the Game of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon, said her fellow cast members were forced to sneak food onto the set when she was 18 — and a decade later she says she’s still traumatized by his comments.
At the time, Mrs. Cooke, now 28, appeared in two TV dramas – Blackout, alongside Christopher Eccleston, and The Secret Of Crickley Hall, with Suranne Jones.
While both shows on the BBCthey were made by independent manufacturing companies.
She said: ‘I realized quite early on that the aesthetics and how people perceive your body is very important. For one of my first jobs, the director asked me to lose weight for the part. I was already very slim, but I was young. I was 18, so I had a chubby face because I was a kid. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m in the movie industry, someone asked me to lose weight. It happened.”
HOW SHE CHANGED: Olivia At The House Of The Dragon Premiere
“I remember when the cast found out they asked me to lose weight because I was limiting what I ate, so they started feeding me. I am traumatized to this day.’
Ms Cooke, who played Becky Sharp in ITV’s dramatization of Vanity Fair, also said the man teased her over a plate of sweet snacks.
She added: “He was going to hand me a note and had a big plate of cookies in front of him.
“He was eating the cookies and he’s like, ‘Oh, not for you!’ I was like, “Shut up!”
“I think it’s changed a bit now, but maybe they’re a little cunning, they know how to word it now.”
The star – who will soon be revealed as the face of Garrard jewelry, a favorite of the Queen – says she noticed she had cellulite at the age of nine, but tries not to get upset about her body.
Teen Olivia in The Secret Of Crinkley Hall
She said, “I remember staring at myself in the mirror and thinking, ‘I really do have cellulite.’
“Maybe it was good to know that women have cellulite, they have shaky bits, and people are shaky because they’re fat, they have skin, they have texture. They’re just bodies.
“So I’ve never really tried to fight that, because I know my body shouldn’t look like that.
“Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes fall down the Instagram rabbit hole and look at people’s artificial, Photoshopped bodies and things like that.”