Sienna Miller or the case of women who pay for their partner’s infidelities with their careers | Celebrities, Vips | S Fashion EL PAÍS

There are many reasons why a promising movie star can see his brilliant career predictions fade. An ill-advised selection of projects, a dwindling vocation, a character difficult to manage even by the most patient director, some public controversy that turns his curriculum into damaged material for the department of marketing… In the case of Sienna Miller, an actress known for films such as Alfie and, above all, for having been one of the most influential women on the red carpet in the last two decades, the reasons for her ill-fated conquest of the skies hollywood They do not respond to merits or demerits, but to the sins of a press so insatiable that it would end up swallowing even the promising future of the actress.

The trigger for the voracious scrutiny was the romantic relationship he had with Jude Law since 2004. His co-star in Alfie He was one of the biggest movie stars of the moment, an update on the British heartthrob who combined critical and public successes. (The talent of Mr. Ripley, Road to Perdition, Cold Mountain) with Titles as the “sexiest man alive” awarded by the magazine People. She, who at 23 years old – nine years younger than him – was already emerging in the London theater, only got to be engaged to him five months before one of the most embarrassing scandals carried out by the British tabloids, on the cusp of the sensational frenzy of the beginning of the century, will forever dynamite his public image.

Jude Law and Sienna Miller gave each other another chance in 2010. It didn’t work out, either. Photo: Getty

The ordeal lived by the actress, who celebrated her 40th birthday on December 28 and who continues to be asked about it more than 15 later, started when the media learned that Jude Law had been unfaithful to the young Daisy Wright. Wright was the nanny of Law’s three children, the result of his previous relationship with fellow actress Sadie Frost, and the tabloid press did not hesitate to convert Miller, who triumphed on the stage with the adaptation of the Shakespearean How you like it, in the official ‘horned’ of England, overshadowing his brilliant professional projection. “With that level of public exposure after my breakup, having to get out of bed to put yourself in front of 800 people every night is the last thing you want. I was in a shock tremendous after all that. It was a very difficult moment ”, the interpreter told The Daily Beast, ensuring that he is unable to remember exactly what happened during those six weeks.

The episode took place in the most frantic and ruthless moments of the British tabloids that, stripped of scruples or normative regulations, saw in her a new Diana of Wales to squeeze and blame for her partner’s disloyalty. Not only did they follow her every night, forcing her to leave the theater surrounded by bodyguards and with a blanket covering her head; They also hacked his mobile and accessed his private conversations, publishing his voicemail messages as exclusive. Some crimes denounced by her in court and that the tabloid News of the world, owned by Rupert Murdoch, he ended up admitting.

In this way, the interpreter had to leave the theater after each performance due to the harassment of the photographers. Photo: Getty

The harassment reached the point that a copywriter of The Sun He accessed her medical reports and learned that the young woman was pregnant even before she had discussed it with her partner or family. The journalist, a Rebekah Brooks then still unknown to the general public, called her representative to discuss the publication of the information and Miller, pressured by the situation as she herself claimed, ended up having an abortion. Finally, in yet another example of the misogyny that has dominated this industry for decades, the trial revealed that Jude Law representatives had not only approved of this espionage, but that they had asked to the newspaper that it was invented that the actress had been unfaithful to her previously represented in order to save his public image. “When I look back he asked me how I managed to survive that … but I did,” explains Miller.

But the list of artists affected by the macho prism of the tabloid press when dealing with public episodes of infidelity is as extensive as Hollywood itself. Actress Jennifer Garner experienced an episode traced to Miller’s, when the news that her ex Ben Affleck had had sex with the babysitter became public. Although they were already separated when the exclusive was published and did not influence the decision to divorce, Garner was not only involved in the scandal, but had to pronounce about it on numerous occasions. About the impossibility of disengaging from a media narrative knows more than anyone else of the famous Jennifer of the show business, but surnamed Aniston. More than 15 years after her separation from Brad Pitt, the protagonist of The Morning Show she is still seen by many as the victimized party by the myth of the “home destroyer” embodied by Angelina Jolie.

Elizabeth Hurley’s professional profile was also affected more than that of her partner at that time, Hugh Grant, when he was arrested by the police while having relations with a prostitute, in one of the biggest sex scandals of the nineties. . Meg Ryan could never get over the indignation who raised in the tabloids her affair with Russell Crowe, despite the fact that her husband Dennis Quaid’s infidelities were in the public domain. Others, like Britain’s Emma Thompson, have channeled the experience to offer some of their best work. As he confessed, to shoot the moving scene of Love Actually In which she discovers that she is being cheated on by her husband, she recalled how she felt when she learned that her real-life partner, actor and director Kenneth Branagh, had fallen in love with another celebrity partner, Helena Bonham-Carter. Beyoncé, meanwhile, conceived one of her most celebrated works, Lemonade, taking as a creative trigger and narrative thread the deception of Jay-Z with the famous “Becky the one with the good hair.”

In the case of Sienna Miller, she barely needed 15 minutes on screen to become quite a cinematic revelation thanks to Alfie, the film that catapulted her to fame. At only 23 years old, they raised her as it girl of the moment: epitome and standard-bearer of boho-chic, a recurring guest at any party and an omnipresent figure on the covers of fashion magazines. The scandal with Law, and the subsequent court battle, put an end to all that aura of mystery and magnetism that emanated from her figure, although she has remained a stylistic reference and a perennial guest at the Met galas. Such was his public exposure off the set that, despite having worked with some of the most praised filmmakers of our time (Clint Eastwood and James Gray, among others), both directors of casting as academics and viewers they seemed to forget that the New Yorker’s first profession is acting. As Jude Law continued his prolific career without much reluctance, Miller saw his chance for success in Hollywood being clouded by scandal.

The New Yorker became a style ambassador boho-chic. Photo: Paramount Pictures

What confessed to Irene Crespo in this same magazine, the artist “now finally feels comfortable” in the industry and, although she was among the great shortlist of star actresses in the film mecca, she anticipates a professional future focused on production and directing tasks . But while his first adventure as a filmmaker arrives, Miller will try to vindicate his acting career in 2022 with two first-rate television projects: the suspense miniseries Anatomy of a scandal on Netflix, and Extrapolations, a drama about the ravages of climate change for Apple TV + with Meryl Streep or Kit Harington.