Kelly Reilly is ever-evolving as an actress, a celebrity,
and a human being, but she's still a little horse girl at heart.
Born into an Irish Catholic family, Kelly Reilly was raised in Surrey, England,
by her police officer father and hospital receptionist mom. She describes herself
as a shy loner at school, a "geeky" kid with very few friends — that is,
until drama brought her out of her shell. At 14, her drama teachers took her to
see plays like Angels in America and The Seagull. She fell in love with the theater.
"When I first wanted to become an actor,
I never thought about movies or TV even. It was purely about the theater."
Just two years later, she left home to pursue an acting career,
much to the disappointment of her parents.
In 1995, Reilly was asked to audition for a small part in Helen Mirren's
detective series Prime Suspect, but she was hesitant. She confessed to The Independent,
"I wasn't a natural performer. I was very introverted, very shy."
Casting directors disagreed, however, and she got the part. Reilly played Polly, the daughter of the
suspect in the murder-du-jour. The 17-year-old was nearly unrecognizable in a red micro bob,
but, even then, she displayed all the charm that would later make her a star.
Early in her career, Reilly was acutely aware of being seen as an outsider. She told The Scotsman,
"For a while every job felt like my first. Because I didn't go to drama school,
I really was aware this wasn't a world I just
easily fell into. It was something I had to keep working really hard in."
Shortly after her debut in Prime Suspect, Kelly Reilly was cast in HTV's adaptation
of the historical novel series Poldark, starring Ioan Gruffudd as the titular protagonist. Looking
straight out of a centuries-old painting with a cascade of auburn curls and an impish smile,
Reilly possessed a delightful English rose quality. Although she was told
that the made-for-TV movie would open industry doors, it was a massive bomb.
At the time, Reilly was unsure of herself, a quality that manifested
in her performances. She explained to The Guardian:
"Everyone imagines that we are extroverts,
wanting to show off. Actually, we are juggling our own neuroses."
She followed Poldark with more small roles on TV and film.
But Reilly hadn't always imagined that her life would be lived on sets and stages. In fact,
her first love was equine: she developed an affinity
for horses at an early age. Caring for the animals became a refuge from school,
which she loathed. Reilly would play hooky to escape to a stable yard.
"I was also a groom for a polo club. I used to go out and exercise all the polo horses."
She told the Evening Standard,
"I couldn't afford a horse, but I kind of adopted one and spent a lot of time with him. It was
an obsession – and if I hadn't discovered acting I wouldn't be here talking to you."
At 23, Kelly Reilly appeared in her first film, British romp Maybe Baby starring a pre-Dr. House
Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. A fresh-faced Reilly played Nimnh, an actor appearing in one of
Laurie's character's productions. The epitome of Y2K chic, Reilly sported a wavy bob, along
with heavy eye makeup. As Nimnh, she paid homage to her roots by adopting a thick Irish accent.
Though half a decade had passed since she'd first appeared on screen, Reilly was still being
relegated to bit parts. But she was motivated to continue, largely due to some sage advice from
her former coworker on Prime Suspect, Dame Helen Mirren. Reilly told the Daily Mail,
"I asked her if I should go to drama school [...] and she said:
'Bad idea — in fact, it's probably the worst thing you could do.' Helen
reckons that to be an actor you have to experience life, rather than disappear
inside a drama school for three years. So I took her advice and carried on acting."
So, Reilly kept at it and in a twist of fate, was cast as the younger version of Mirren's character
in the 2001 drama Last Orders, alongside film giants Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins. There,
she met her boyfriend, fellow actor J.J. Feild, who happened to be playing the
younger version of Caine's character. The pair soon moved to an apartment in South London.
In 2003, Kelly Reilly appeared onstage alongside Minnie Driver, Hank Azaria, and Matthew Perry
in Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Then, she took on the title character in Patrick Marber's play
After Miss Julie. Miss Julie is the daughter of an upper-class socialist celebrating the Labour
Party's historic 1945 landslide victory. Despite the socialist sympathies of Miss Julie's family,
the household employs servants and a chauffeur with whom Julie has an affair. Born working-class,
Reilly claimed to have difficulty empathizing with her character's social standing.
Reilly told The Times that performing on stage
made her far more anxious than working in films, elaborating —
"Opening nights can be terrifying. It's not like doing a film,
there's a different kind of adrenaline."
She must have figured it out, because critics raved about the authenticity of her Miss Julie,
for which Reilly won an Olivier Award. At a theater event that year, Reilly channeled
classic Hollywood glam a la Rita Hayworth with her 1950s style curls and silky little black dress.
By 2004, Kelly Reilly was regularly acting with Hollywood icons. She was cast in the
historical drama The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp. In the film,
she locked lips with Depp and found herself starstruck. She confessed to The Telegraph —
"I was completely unprofessional. I was texting my friends going, 'You're not going to believe
what I'm doing.' All these women were there, giving me the thumbs-up. [...] There we were,
all these professional people... and we weren't being professional at all."
Despite appearing alongside the likes of Depp and,
in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, Keira Knightley, Reilly remained unknown. But
that's something Reilly was more than happy to live with. She explained,
"I don't think I would ever do a big, glitzy film just to be in a big,
glitzy film. I still have to love the film and feel good about the script."
Still, Reilly showcased her luminous star power on the red carpet. Opting for a bold red lip,
a fur shawl, and emerald green dress, she sparkled at the Olivier Awards that year.
In 2005, Kelly Reilly landed her breakthrough role in British dramedy Mrs Henderson Presents.
The film's director, Stephen Frears, described Reilly as "a complete natural."
Acting alongside legend Judi Dench, Reilly admitted to being awestruck,
though she tried her best not to fangirl in front of the Dame. She told Empire,
"I was nervous [...] I stayed away from her for quite a while because I didn't
want to be gushing or say anything stupid. So she probably thought that I was a bit rude and cold."
The film is based on the true story of Laura Henderson, played by Dench. She was the founder
of London's Windmill Theater, which was infamous for its stage shows featuring naked women.
Reilly plays Maureen, one of the performers. The role, unsurprisingly, required nudity.
"So what basically are you looking for?"
"Personality. Something in their smile. Their eyes."
"Well, I suggest you start looking in their faces."
Not long after, Reilly got tired of being reduced
to the sum of her parts. She explained to The Guardian,
"I don't think I'm someone who chases that sort of attention at all. I'm not a show-off, I'm not
an exhibitionist. I've done nudity because it's in the film or the play but I don't search it out."
At the film's premiere, the constantly-evolving Reilly
debuted a new image. Her signature ginger locks were replaced by sleek,
dark tresses, and she traded in her porcelain complexion for a more sun-kissed look.
By 2008, Kelly Reilly was over her brunette phase and back to her flowing Titian hair.
She also embraced her natural skin tone again. She appeared at that year's BAFTAs
with a simple nude lip and peachy blush, and also made a return to U.K. television in the
miniseries He Kills Coppers. "Fancy a good time boys?"
Reilly played a sex worker having an affair with a crooked cop,
a role for which she received critical acclaim.
In an interview withThe Independent, Reilly's co-star and friend Rafe Spall
praised her ability to relinquish vanity for her art, saying,
"Kelly's not vain, even though she's lovely-looking – she was happy to 'old
up' in He Kills Coppers, and I think that's harder for a woman than a man."
As the daughter of a police officer, the story of a man killing cops was close to
Reilly's heart. She was unhappy with anti-police sentiment following the 2011 London riots after
the killing of Mark Duggan, a Black man who surrendered to police. She told The Guardian,
"You hear that people hate the police, like during the recent student protests, and I think: 'Well,
they're doing their job and they have kids' [...] I'm all for a good protest though."
By her early 30s, Kelly Reilly was more comfortable within herself than ever. Debuting
pin-straight auburn locks and sideswept bangs, she radiated newfound confidence.
Speaking with The Guardian, she admitted that she's glad to be done with her 20s, joking —
"Women do well in their thirties. They put their bags down and say,
this is who I am – like it or lump it."
Things were indeed looking up. In 2009, Reilly was cast in the British crime series Above Suspicion,
based on the novels of Prime Suspect author Lynda La Plante. La Plante said
she couldn't imagine anyone other than Reilly as Detective Anna Travis, telling The Scotsman,
"My first meeting with Kelly for the role of Anna Travis made me
very excited. She was the right age, a natural redhead, like the character,
and her father is an ex-police officer [...] She is a star."
The role required Reilly to examine maggot-filled corpses. While the
corpses were fake, the maggots were not, much to the actress's chagrin. Despite the
quintessential Britishness of the series, it proved a huge success across the pond.
In 2009, Kelly Reilly was cast as Mary Morstan in Guy Ritchie's
Sherlock Holmes adaptation and its sequel, starring Robert Downey Jr.
It was important to Reilly to lean into the feminist parable of Mary, who longed to be
part of the workforce rather than stuck at home playing house. She told The Scotsman,
"I can't imagine what it must have been like in those days,
when you just had to wait for the husband to come home."
She was disappointed to find Sherlock Holmes to be a boys' club,
with the female characters reduced to background players. As she confessed to The Independent.
"It is a boys' film. The two women's roles are
not exactly ones you would break your heart over trying to get."
On top of that, Reilly suddenly found her personal life under scrutiny. When news
broke that Madonna and Ritchie were divorcing, Reilly was dogged by rumors that she was the
other woman. Not true. She recalled that time in an interview with The Telegraph:
"Before you knew it there were press on my parents' doorstep going, 'So,
I hear that Kelly's the reason for the divorce.' I
mean... [Ritchie] is a nice guy but we hadn't even had a cup of tea together."
By 2012, Reilly was in her mid-thirties and not
interested in pretending otherwise. She explained to The Guardian,
"I love actresses who embrace aging, like Robin Wright Penn;
she hasn't had anything done. You can see the laughter lines [...] when I see
her playing a character I believe in her, unlike an actress who can't move her face."
Indeed, Reilly was a natural beauty even on the red carpet,
sporting a chic bob with 1960s-esque bangs and smoky eyeshadow at the Flight premiere.
Reilly met her husband, Kyle Baugher, in the U.S. while filming Flight. He's not an actor,
but Reilly won't say much more than that. The pair wed in 2012 and Reilly relocated
to New York, a city that was overwhelming at first. In The Telegraph, she admitted,
"England is always home, but I have made my life here. I suffered terrible homesickness
at first – for English people, pubs, humor [...] but I love New York."
In 2014, Kelly Reilly was cast in ABC's psychological drama series Black Box,
playing a neurologist with bipolar disorder.
Speaking with Broadway World, Reilly said that she identified with the character. She told them,
"I believe that we all have many different sides to ourselves; me,
Kelly, the actress at work; me, Kelly, the wife at home; or me, the daughter."
Although she'd been cast as the lead in a TV show for the first time in her career,
Reilly remained a reluctant star. At the time, she admitted that she was totally disinterested in
attending galas or being photographed in the front row at fashion shows. She told The Telegraph,
"Nothing brings me out in more of a cold sweat than a premiere.
I was invited to New York fashion week – no way. I have zero fascination with
that world and feel incredibly awkward in it, I just can't do the schmooze."
Instead, she appeared at low-key gatherings, showcasing her newly dyed strawberry blond hair
and looking more like a girlboss than an actor in her monochrome ensembles. Reilly confessed that
she probably would have been far more successful in her acting career if she cared about appeasing
industry execs, but she's always been adamant: her artistic integrity comes first. As she put it,
"In an industry that's all about pretending, you've got to be truthful to who you are."
A stint on a long-running TV series wasn't always on Kelly Reilly's agenda. Back in 2009,
she told The Scotsman that she understood the appeal of Brit actors working on American TV. The
money is great, after all, but Reilly insisted it wasn't her kind of gig. In time, however, a
standout role on U.S. television would be exactly what Reilly needed to cement her A-list status.
In 2018, a 41-year-old Reilly snagged a career-defining role when she made her
debut as the tough but very occasionally tender banker, Beth Dutton, in Western drama Yellowstone.
"I am the rock therapists break themselves against."
Reilly relishes playing the daughter of Kevin Costner's ruthlessly ambitious patriarch,
John Dutton. In an interview with The Independent, she went on to say,
"I certainly hadn't seen this sort of character on TV. I find her more in plays,
these enormous women like Medea or Lady Macbeth. [...] There
was something huge about her and powerful and terrifying."
At the show's premiere, she showcased her incredible transformation,
her beloved bob replaced by long, flowing blond locks and, in line
with her newfound status as a Hollywood star, a heavily sun-kissed complexion.
After years of supporting roles and guest-star stints on British TV, not only was Reilly now a
leading actress on both sides of the Atlantic, but she was becoming a household name.
"People call me Beth. They'll come to me and they're wanting
to like high-five me or start a fight."
In an interview with Vanity Fair, she admitted that playing Beth was a cathartic experience:
"I get energized playing her. She gives me a lot of strength,
a lot of backbone that I didn't know that I necessarily had."
By 2019, Kelly Reilly looked every bit the old-school Hollywood siren, wearing a 1950s style
polka dot dress at a Yellowstone Season 2 event. But red carpet glam wasn't to her liking, with the
actor feeling uncomfortable having to dress up for the media circuit. She once told The Independent,
"I only get nervous because I never know what to wear. And I'd rather be comfortable. So I
always end up taking my shoes off as soon as I get to the party as I can't walk in heels."
True to her rejection of idealized Hollywood standards, Reilly took on some left-field
and decidedly un-glamorous roles. She even became a scream queen for a time:
she was cast in the horror flick Eli as a woman who gives birth to the spawn
of Satan himself. The film received poor reviews, but Reilly wasn't done
with horror. She soon signed on to the acclaimed gothic horror film The Cursed.
In The Cursed, Reilly plays a mother desperate to protect her children from
bloodthirsty supernatural forces in early 20th century France. The
character was unlike anyone she had played before, which made her all
the more eager to take on the role. In an interview with Daily Dead, she explained,
"I loved the playing with a different set of tones. And the themes of the archetype
of the mother was something that I hadn't explored before,
especially in this period where this real constraint feels strange."
The new decade has seen Kelly Reilly win praise from her peers. She dabbled in work overseas,
appearing in Amanda Sthers' French romance flick Promises in 2021. The director praised the star
power of Reilly and onscreen love interest Pierfrancesco Favino. Sthers told Variety,
"Together, Favino and Reilly look like a quintessential cinematic
couple bringing a sense of timelessness to our story."
Reilly has certainly come a long way since the days of scrambling for bit parts and supporting
roles. She's now a bona fide member of the showbiz elite. In 2022, Reilly was nominated
for the Screen Actors Guild Award and MTV Movie and TV Award for her performance in as Beth
Dutton in Yellowstone, although she lost out to Succession and Zendaya for Euphoria respectively.
Now in her mid 40s, Reilly is embracing life as a blonde. And she still has the enviable cheekbones
and charming smile that first propelled her towards the A-list. And as she grows older,
she welcomes the changes as a gift. In her typical frank style, Reilly told The Telegraph,
"Our world is so ageist. I remember when I was 27, being told, 'Don't ever tell anyone
you're older than 23'. But there's a richness and sensuality that age brings to your work;
you're considered more of a heavyweight. I'm a dinosaur and I welcome it. Bring it on."