For the past two years, Elizabeth Debicki’s name has been synonymous with Diana Spencer’s. The six-foot-three Australian beauty played the Princess of Wales in the final two seasons of Peter Morgan’s The Crown, nailing Diana’s voice and mannerisms. The performance launched her to global stardom, and won her a Golden Globe. Out of Diana’s shadow and back as Debicki, she’s taken on a very different role. In Ti West’s MaXXXine, the third installment of his horror series, Debicki plays a 1980s film director. To celebrate the film’s release, she shares her key components to the good life. —Clara Molot
Airport: One I am leaving, having just landed somewhere I desperately want to be!
App: One that switches off your phone for you and tells you to breathe
and go outside.
Bedtime: Before 10:30 P.M. is bliss (and mostly unattainable).
Bike: My seventh-birthday present. Hot pink, white plastic tassels on the handles.
Birthday: By the Mediterranean Sea, which is warm like a bath. A little party in the evening.
Breakfast, weekday:
Coffee brought to me in bed.
Breakfast, weekend: Parisian croissant in my pajamas.
Car: One with ample legroom.
Cocktail: Dirty vodka martini, extra olives.
Date: Cinema, for a good film, and a cheap bowl of really perfect noodle soup after.
Dinner: Summer evening at my house with happy friends, whitefish, a bottle of wine, and a lemon tart covered in cream.
Disguise: People’s limited expectations of your abilities.
Drive: Victoria, Australia. Sunset over the bush.
Enemy: A fake movie enemy with whom you have great scenes opposite, and who is hilarious in real life.
Flaw: One that is gracefully acknowledged.
Friends: Mine—lucky me.
Good-bye: Not a real one. I know I will get to see you soon.
Hotel: A little European boutique, hidden away, very quiet and close to the sea, with scrubbed wooden tables, lots of fresh fruit, and starched sheets.
Indulgence: Chocolate Nemesis at the River Cafe in London.
Insult: The one I inevitably think of two days later while I’m washing my hair.
Lunch, weekday: Something fresh and filling.
Lunch, weekend: Fries with anything.
Movie: Moonstruck.
Name: The credit sequences of old MGM films.
Nonfiction book: Stasiland.
Novel: My Ántonia.
Pet: Our first golden retriever from my childhood, Barty.
Piece of advice: “Be kind. People are fighting extraordinary battles you know nothing about.”
Podcast: BBC’s HistoryExtra podcast.
Restaurant: A local haunt you suddenly find yourself in with heavenly food.
Elizabeth’s Essentials
