- I was very concerned at that point about being castable.
I was concerned
that maybe I wasn't being considered for roles
because I was just too unconventional
and maybe I should make more effort to fit in.
And then I thought,
"no, I'm not gonna make any effort to fit in."
[light lounge music]
Hi, Vogue.
I'm Gwendoline Christie, and this is My Life In Looks.
Before she starts to cry
all the way through the filmed feature.
This is Brienne of Tarth from "Game of Thrones".
My goodness, Brienne of Tarth is just so close to my heart.
I remember when I first heard about the part.
I really wanted to do screen work.
That's all I'd wanted to do my whole life, really.
I'd been told, just simply because I was a tall woman
with somewhat unusual looks,
that I would probably never work on screen.
But that was a long time ago
and this part had been lovingly crafted
by George R. R. Martin,
who famously said when asked,
"how come you always write
such brilliant feminist characters?"
He says, "I always think about women as people."
What I loved about this part,
I truly couldn't believe it existed.
I never thought a part like this would come about
in television or in film.
And I had to take my hair away,
I had to acknowledge my height, my strength,
my size, my androgyny, and also my vulnerability,
and I also had to really get down the gym,
which was probably the hardest thing of all to do.
But this part I will never stop loving
and in it, it was a huge breakthrough for me
and I think has helped to contribute in some small way
towards the landscape of how we see women
in our modern entertainment
because the amazing thing was people loved the character.
This is quite an extraordinarily emotional moment for me.
It felt like such a breakthrough, this moment.
I'd wanted to be in "Star Wars" my whole life.
I've been a fan since I was six years old.
I was so captivated by this band of misfits.
It felt like a world that I could fit into.
And I also felt huge warmth and embraced by America
and I wanted to wear an American designer.
My partner, Giles Deacon, his very old friend Peter Copping
was the head designer of Oscar de la Renta.
And I didn't ever think Oscar de la Renta would dress me.
I was a huge admirer of Peter Copping's work
since he was at Nina Ricci.
and he said he would love to.
And he talked to me on the phone
and said, "Gwen, how would you like to feel?"
And I thought that was a beautiful way to approach it
and I just wanted to feel beautiful
and I wanted something about this mythic fairytale
of me managing to be cast in "Star Wars"
and play this role that was about breaking the confines
of a very closed arm female experience,
about inhabiting a different space,
about female rage, about a transgressive woman
and I wanted to feel that myth around me.
And so I had this beautiful dress made for me
with my band of Stormtroopers behind me here.
[gasps]
She looks fearsome!
Vivienne Westwood is someone I've admired my entire life.
When I was growing up, I was always obsessed with fashion.
The reason for it was that I loved design
and I loved the ability to transform.
That's what it seemed to offer to me,
that on a day-to-day basis, you could become someone else.
You could express something different about yourself.
You could inhabit different forms.
And I met Vivienne backstage at one of her shows
and it was just genuinely a dream come true.
She asked me to model in her show,
and this was a unisex collection.
And what I loved was that I felt
like Vivienne and Andreas were doing what they always do,
what Vivienne has always done so brilliantly,
which is she has thought outside of the box.
She's a revolutionary.
She's a rebel.
She goes against all conventional forms,
but she does it with true excellence.
And I felt that this collection was doing that
and I felt celebrated for who I was.
This is a Giles Deacon dress.
I think the secret is out that Giles Deacon is my partner
and Charles and I have been together for 10 years.
Yet again, there's a theme here,
something I never thought I'd been invited to.
And he said, "how do you want to be?
How do you want to look?
How do you want to feel?"
And I wanted to feel really alive and vibrant and sexual.
[laughs]
And so we looked at different forms.
I also wanted to show my back because I was very strong
and I wanted to show that strength.
It was a true collaboration and I felt incredible.
I felt really strong and vibrant and I felt like me.
But I will love this dress forever.
I've worn it many, many different times.
A dress that's truly about love.
This is a picture of me modeling in a Miu Miu show!
Beyond the realms of what I thought was possible.
The reason this is so special
is that we filmed "Game of Thrones" for a really long time.
It was an incredible job, it was a tough job,
and at the end of it,
I just really wanted to feel beautiful and fabulous.
What was amazing was that I went to Paris
and my fitting, it was like it was 1991.
My fitting was at a quarter to midnight.
I was incredibly nervous to meet Miuccia Prada,
who's always been one of my design heroes.
And I came into the fitting room
and I was very, very overexcited about being there.
I knew some of the people there, Fabio and Katie,
and was really excited.
And then Mrs. Prada asked us to be serious
and asked me if I could be serious.
And I felt mortified
because I was worried she thought I wasn't being respectful.
She was wonderful to me
and she got me to walk around the room
and then she said, "just walk normally."
And we sort of worked on the look
and I walked normally,
but I didn't really want to walk normally.
I wanted to model,
but I thought maybe she can come round to this,
so I just walked normally.
And then the last time,
I really modeled around the room
like I'd been waiting my entire life to do
and she said, "now, that is amazing!"
This is Tomo Koizumi.
Tomo is an incredible person, incredible designer,
and I just thought, "what an individual,
what an individual mind."
And Katie texted me saying, "what do you want to wear?
Do you want to wear The Queen?"
And I said, "which is that?"
And she showed me, she sent me a picture,
and, of course, I absolutely wanted to wear it.
What did go through my mind though
was that I was very concerned at that point
about being castable.
I was concerned
that maybe I wasn't being considered for roles
because I was just too unconventional
and maybe I should make more effort to fit in.
And then I thought,
"no, I'm not gonna make any effort to fit in.
I'm gonna work really hard
and do my best to be good at my job.
I'm gonna honor who I am
and every single freakish thing about me."
And I decided to wear this!
And I remember I said to Giles, "I'm gonna wear this"
and he said, "have you seen the feet?"
And he sent me a picture from the cover
from "Woman's Wear Daily"
and I said, "but they won't be feet on me.
I'm a foot taller than that model.
These will be flamenco-style flares,
like Madonna in 'La Isla Bonita'"
And there we go.
It wasn't easy getting down those,
I think there were at least 50 concrete stairs,
in the platforms.
Katie was very nice.
She said, "do you want to wear flats?"
I said, "of course I don't want to wear flats.
I want to wear heels."
So I didn't make it easy for myself.
This was the last premier of "Game of Thrones".
I was working with wonderful Jerry Stafford
and he was working with Iris Van Herpen a lot then
and we met and we decided that I would wear this dress.
I was so worried about doing this dress justice
because Iris is an unbelievable designer.
There is no one else quite like Iris.
And I was just very nervous about it all.
It was the end of "Game of Thrones".
There was a lot of emotion.
But simultaneously, I felt liberated
and I felt like this was the opportunity
for my life to begin again in a different form.
And I walked out onto the carpet
and I was just gonna stand
and the photographer said,
just one photographer, I think, said,
"let us see the sleeves."
And I just started to come alive
and I just started to do
whatever it was I wanted to do in that moment
and make that dress work
and to capture the fun and hilarity and energy and pleasure
of what had happened in that room with Iris.
And this image went around the world.
It was extraordinary.
This is a Rick Owens look.
Rick Owens is one of my favorite designers.
Always when it's show time if I'm filming,
I love to get on Vogue Runway
and I like to see the looks as they drop.
And I saw this look come in and I gasped.
But I was wearing
all of the incredible Michele Lamy jewelry as well here,
the hung rod jewelry.
I love Michele Lamy!
She is a force, she has incredible energy,
and I wanted to bring that into this.
I wanted to feel powerful.
I also wanted to subvert form.
I wanted to subvert my shape.
As you see, there's some panniers here that come out.
The whole center, the focus of the dress is somewhat lower
and it has all of these different panels,
like an M.C. Escher drawing.
It takes you into all of these different directions.
You can see that this is about experience.
This is not just a cavalcade of emotion.
There is rigor and discipline
alongside a raging, vibrant, unique energy.
That's sort of how I wanted to feel.
I did feel a bit of that.
Can we just take a moment to talk about Thom Browne?
Thom Browne is a wonderful person and a new friend.
It took a long time for me to feel embraced
by the acting industry,
but the fashion industry did embrace me
for everything about me that society said didn't work,
for everything about my loudness as a person,
my opinions, my sense of humor,
my desire to change and transform
and simultaneously demand to take up space
with the body that I was born into.
The fashion industry told me that they love me
and he created this incredible show
with layer upon layer of looks.
He wanted me to do a performance,
which I did for him because I would do anything for Thom.
There was an amazing moment when I head out.
I was so full of nerves
and all the great and the good were there,
Anna Wintour was there,
and I looked up into the light
and I just thought, "it's taken so long to get here
[chuckles] and I've really struck gold in this moment"
and I felt transported.
And I will never stop being grateful for that moment.
And for my final look, we have Larissa Weems.
I've wanted to work with Tim Burton my entire life.
I cannot believe I've had this opportunity
and I cannot believe how glorious it's been.
What self-respecting misfit
hasn't watched "The Addams Family"
and thought, "that's a family I can fit into"?
Larissa Weems is very special to me
because Tim Burton said to me,
"do whatever you want with the character."
And that was a gift.
I wanted to subvert this idea of the Hitchcock Heroine.
It was a part I would never have been cast as,
I would never be cast to look that way,
and I wanted this woman to be not a victim,
but someone ruthless,
someone that's grown up being in the shadow of Morticia,
someone that's used to being second best,
someone that's used to nothing ever quite being good enough.
And I figured that she would look
to our magic portal, to the cinema,
in the same way that I had when I was growing up
and would want to embody one of those heroines.
I was overwhelmed to have the opportunity
to work with Colleen Atwood.
I think Colleen had recently bought a secondhand poster
of "The Birds" with Tippi Hedren
and she said to me, "that's who I think you are."
Incredible moment.
And after playing Brienne of Tarth for 10 years
and loving Brienne of Tarth,
I sort of wanted to play the opposite of that,
at least visually.
And so Colleen and I had these wonderful fittings
where she has a laser-like mind.
She always made me feel celebrated.
She made me feel that my body was beautiful,
I am beautiful, that I wear clothes well,
that my ideas were welcome and relevant.
Did I change my silhouette a little bit?
I'm not telling you
because I'm not gonna tell you everything,
but we altered and changed her silhouette a little bit.
But we kept her shoulders strong and these strong collars
so that the face was always presented.
Certainly in "Game of Thrones"
when I was playing Brienne of Tarth,
that character was having to overcome a lot of shame
regarding the way society treated the character,
but this is a character who was bold and assured and proud
and presenting herself to the world.
The geniuses I've worked with have been open
and together we've created some things
that I really do feel proud of.
They're fun. They're alive.
They're an expression of me and who I am in that moment.
We all have our nerves,
we all feel strange and have our insecurities,
but in those moments
I feel a great deal of happiness and joy
and I so appreciate that generosity,
the generosity of Giles, the generosity of Rick Owens,
the generosity of Colleen,
all the people I work with, there are too many to name,
but it's a community and I'm so grateful to be a part of it.
[light lounge music]
And that was My Life In Looks.
Thank you for having me, Vogue.
I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.
[light lounge music]