ONE IN A MILLIE-ON
Watch a movie? My brain and I don’t even enjoy sitting through one of my own films, reveals Millie Bobby Brown
Turning 20 last month has been a sobering experience for the young actress
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN’S latest movie amassed 50million views in just two weeks – but the actress will not be sitting down to watch it.
Despite her Hollywood career, the 20-year-old Brit has revealed she does not have the attention span to sit through an entire film, even if Damsel has become Netflix’s most-watched title of the week.
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Millie, who plays Princess Elodie in the fantasy adventure, said: “I don’t watch movies. People come up to me and say, ‘You should definitely watch this movie, it would change your life’.
“And I’m like, ‘How long do I have to sit there for?’ Because my brain and I don’t even like sitting for my own movies.”
The in-demand actress is also short on leisure time as she is filming the eagerly anticipated fifth and final series of sci-fi mega-hit Stranger Things as well as planning her wedding to Jake Bongiovi, 21, the son of rocker Jon Bon Jovi.
The US model and actor proposed to Millie underwater while scuba-diving last April after two years of dating.
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Millie said: “My fiancé is the biggest movie buff.
“He just sits and watches movies all day. And I cannot do that.
“That is the one thing I can’t sit down and do.
“But I really love Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, I love Mad Max. So I feel like I’m always channelling that inner bad-ass.”
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On the rare occasion Millie does watch a film, she likes to multi-task.
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She said: “I just have to be doing something.
“So I either eat too much, because I’m just bored. Or I have to be doing something — baking, grooming a dog or on my computer.
“If I’m not doing some-thing I just can’t sit there and look at the screen for that long.
“It’s not to say the movie isn’t epic and cinematic and brilliant, or that there aren’t amazing performances. I love some of these actors.”
Millie made her feature film debut in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters in 2019 and later served as producer and starred in the title role of the big-screen adaptation of the Enola Holmes Mysteries books.
While she has amassed 63million Instagram followers since finding fame as a child star on Stranger Things, the actress says she cannot get to grips with social media.
Millie, who moved to Orlando, Florida, with her mum Kelly, estate agent dad Robert and three siblings when she was eight, has previously revealed her media team are responsible for most of her online posts.
It means Millie often misses out on the latest news and viral trends.
She said: “My sister Ava is 12 and she is so with it. And I’m like 20, I should be with it but I’m not, I’m really not.
“And I’m not trying to be like, ‘I’m like old and mature’.
“Like, if you don’t have TikTok, if you don’t have Instagram, you might as well not be a part of society. It’s crazy. I feel like I miss out on huge news things and trends. And Jake says something and I’m like, ‘What? Is that really a trend?’ ”
Millie wasn’t even aware that Taylor Swift, one of the world’s best-selling musicians, had released her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, until she was sent a message.
Laughing, she said: “I know this because I have people send me TikToks. So I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, thank you for letting me know that’. But other than that, I would never know.”
Yes, I Barbied. How could you not?
Millie Bobby Brown
One internet sensation even Millie could not avoid was the record-breaking Barbie movie, which starred Margot Robbie as the title’s much-loved doll.
She said: “Yes, I Barbied. How could you not? Like, honestly, that would be the last straw. No Instagram, no TikTok, no Barbie . . . ‘who are you?!’ Barbie is what the world needs. You know, just like a big hug of pink and happy women. Just that made me so happy.”
It is perhaps unsurprising that Millie struggles to keep up with current affairs when you consider her unconventional home life and workload.
Millie and Jake live in Los Angeles with more than 20 animals including several dogs, cats, tortoises, goats and a donkey.
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They have even been spotted taking their three-year-old pampered poodle, Winnie, for walks in a pushchair.
She launched her Florence By Mills beauty brand in 2019 and has recently released pet accessories and fashion lines.
She has been a Goodwill Ambas-sador for children’s humanitarian org-anisation Unicef since 2018, is the author of debut novel Nineteen Steps — inspired by her grandmother’s experience of the 1943 Bethnal Green Tube disaster, a crush that killed 173 people — and is working towards a health and human services degree, from Purdue University, Indiana.
And that is in addition to acting and modelling jobs for Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Vogue magazine.
In Damsel, her character Princess Elodie agrees to marry a dashing prince, only to discover his family have offered her as a sacrifice to a bloodthirsty dragon.
The twisted fairytale sees the brave princess plummet into a cave and have to claw her way out.
Millie got to channel that “inner bad-ass” — just like Lara Croft actress Angelina Jolie — by doing many of her own stunts.
She said: “I knew it was going to be intense but I guess not probably to the extent of what it actually was.
“Physically, I thought my body would react to it better. But my body definitely took its toll. Every day I was aching. It was a hard shoot. It pushed me more than any role.”
‘I’m a nightmare’
Millie revealed the gruelling action scenes made her physically sick, which shocked co-stars including her on-screen father Ray Winstone.
She explained: “I don’t like climbing, and falling makes me feel sick. I’m really bad at motion sickness.
“On Stranger Things and Damsel, if I do it one too many times I am outside [being sick] and everybody’s like, ‘Oh God, Millie’. I’m a nightmare!” She was just 12 when she hit screens in Stranger Things — as Eleven, who has psychic powers.
Within a year of the show’s release she had won the Screen Actors Guild award, for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, and been nominated for an Emmy.
On filming the final series, she said: “We’re having fun, we’re all back together again and we’re not thinking about the end. The crew is happy, the cast are happy and we’re really excited.
“It’s a long road ahead. Right now we’re living in bliss.”
But Millie says she is ready to leave behind, for good, the fictional American town of Hawkins.
She has said: “It’s been such a huge factor in part of my life, but it’s like graduating high school, like senior year . . . it’s time to live your own life, it’s time for it to end.”
Eleven may have rubbed off on Millie more than she realises, though.
The actress revealed she enjoys getting psychic readings.
She said: “It’s very, very interesting. I also like the ones just on the street in New York. Midnight, me and my fiancé just go and get a psychic reading.”
When Millie announced her engage-ment to Jake last April, the news went viral though she was criticised for being just 19.
She now plans to make their wed-ding day private because “it’s important to keep those precious moments really close to your chest”.
But turning 20 last month has also been a sobering experience.
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She said: “I think being 19 I was like, ‘I still can say I’m a teenager’. But now I can’t. And I have to ‘adult’ now. Learning how to do the washing is very new for me.
“My mum has always taken care of me my whole life. And now I’m like, ‘Oh, I have to do this. This is hard. No wonder you were complaining!’ ”
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