Hayley Atwell was dubbed ‘Fatwell’ by bullies at school — but the curvy actress has had the last laugh as she talks joy of having big boobs
SHE plays a buttoned-up spinster in the glossy remake of Howards End – but Hayley Atwell’s life has been far from prim and proper.
The curvy actress was brought up by her mystical shaman dad, who calls himself Star Touches Earth, and her bohemian mum who encouraged her to walk over hot coals aged nine.
At school she was nicknamed “Hayley Fatwell” by bullies, and even at work she was dubbed a “fat pig” — by Hollywood sex monster Harvey Weinstein.
But as the 35-year-old, best known to superhero fans as Marvel’s gun-toting Agent Carter, prepares to sex up EM Forster’s classic novel for the BBC on Sunday, it is clear who is having the last laugh.
She said recently: “I know I’ve got curves and big boobs and I’m never, ever going to complain about that.
“It’s simply that most other actresses are really, stupidly tiny. When I meet some of them, I can’t believe it.
“Plus I love how expressive my body is. I’ve always been a big believer in what you don’t see being much sexier than what you do.”
Hayley’s enviable figure has helped make her one of our hottest exports. But that is not how Weinstein saw it during filming for the 2008 remake of Brideshead Revisited.
He told her over lunch: “You look like a fat pig on screen. Stop eating so much.”
Emma Thompson, who played Lady Marchmain in that film and was eating with them, immediately leapt to her co-star’s defence, calling Weinstein a misogynist and a bully.
She reassured Hayley: “You’re not a model. You’re an actor.”
For Hayley, who plays Margaret Schlegel in Howards End — just as Emma did in the 1992 film version — it was a cruel reminder of the bullying she suffered at her West London comp.
As well as being teased over her figure, she also recalled: “I’d see kids fighting in the playground and say things like, ‘I’m sensing a lot of anger here’.
“A girl said to me, ‘Your trainers are s***’ and I’d be empathetic and ask, ‘Is everything OK at home?’
“I still have this one girl’s face in my mind. Sometimes I play in my head what I’d like to say to her. She tried to Facebook me a year ago. I ignored her. ‘Are you kidding me? You made my life hell’.”
To the bullies, the unconventional Hayley was an easy target.
Her parents, Alison and Grant, met at a London workshop of Dale Carnegie’s self-help book How To Win Friends And Influence People.
The couple fell in love over their shared hippy ideals but separated by the time their daughter was two.
Grant, who goes by his Native American name Star Touches Earth and is originally from Kansas City, moved to California after the split.
Hayley would visit him in the summer holidays and said: “We had quite a romantic, idealistic relationship when I was younger.
“He was kind of this god-like figure that lived in that hot country across the ocean where it never rained and everyone was happy.”
At home in England, Hayley has described her life with mum Alison as being like the relationship between Saffy and Edina from Nineties sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
She turned vegetarian aged eight after seeing Loyd Grossman put a live lobster into boiling water on TV, and went with her mum to a “Power Into Action” workshop aged nine and braved the hot coals.
While her friends were out experimenting with booze, drugs and cigarettes as teenagers, Hayley and her mum went on anti-vivisection demos and “Free The Dolphins” protests. Other pupils listened to garage music, Hayley stuck to Enya and Native American chants.
But by then, she had been given her first taste of acting. A trip to the theatre aged 11 to see Ralph Fiennes ignited a passion to tread the boards herself.
She went on to star alongside him and Keira Knightley 15 years later, in 2008 film The Duchess.
Hayley reckons her acting skills blossomed because of the way she had to adapt to get on with other kids at school, as well as the liberal, intellectual friends of her parents.
She said: “When I was with my mother’s friends, I could talk fluently about [French philosopher] Descartes. When I was with my father, I could do the New Age thing and immerse myself in ceremonies for dead spirits. When I was with my posh friends, I could be posh.
“When I was with my rougher friends, I could be totally street.”
She won a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London — funding her first year with proceeds from a Pringles TV advert — where she befriended new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker.
Hayley was not short of work after graduating. Within eight months, Woody Allen had cast her in 2007 film Cassandra’s Dream, and she has since appeared in US legal drama Conviction and Channel 4’s Any Human Heart, with Howards End co-star Matthew Macfadyen.
She invited her dad to see her in a screening of BBC2 drama The Line Of Beauty, an adaptaion of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel. After leaving the room for a minute, she returned to find him giving director Saul Dibb a massage.
Hayley recalled: “He said, ‘Hi, nice to . . . oh, I am noticing some tension in your hand’. Dad is someone who is not of the everyday.
“His answerphone message is brilliant. He goes, ‘Please leave a message to match your impeccable spirit and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can for massage and healing and anti-ageing products’.
“So Californian! How can you be against ageing yet all about inner worth?”
In another interview, Hayley pointed to a spiky ring on her finger shaped like a bird and called it her “truth ring”. She explained: “If I suspect someone is not telling me the truth, I poke this in their face.”
Perhaps that explains the serial monogamy of her love life. She has said: “I’ve always been in relationships. They tend to be back to back and last around two years.”
Hayley was, until recently, in a long-term relationship with Gabriel Bisset-Smith, a screenwriter who worked on Channel 4 teen drama Skins. The pair were friends for seven years, meeting at drama school, before they got together.
She also dated model and musician Evan Jones, who is eight years her junior, for 18 months.
Since the pair split in 2015 Hayley has been linked to comedian and co-creator of The Office Stephen Merchant — although she plays it down. She said: “We were photographed coming out of the Groucho Club in London.
“The next thing I know I’m in my pyjamas eating cereal and I get a tweet saying, ‘Hayley Atwell in car accident with Stephen Merchant’. So I texted him and said, ‘Apparently we were in an accident together. Are we OK?’.”
While her mum still lives in a modest flat in London, Hayley has swapped the capital for LA. But she has no intention of letting the Hollywood glamour go to her head.
She said: “My real self, the self I have always been from a child, is a loner and nerd, slightly overweight, with a very heavy fringe. That is who I was as a kid.
“I don’t think I will ever be anything other than that. It is sheer delight when I see pictures of myself now because I think, ‘That’s not me. I was Hayley Fatwell’.”
- Howards End starts on BBC1 on Sunday at 9pm.
Story of a clash between classes
BASED on the 1910 novel by EM Forster, Howards End is about English social and class divisions in the early 20th century.
Hayley’s character, Margaret Schlegel, is an earnest, endearing woman who is torn between the different loves in her life.
The story contrasts the lives of Margaret and her two sisters with rich capitalists the Wilcoxes and the Basts, an impoverished young couple from a lower-class background.
The Schlegel sisters attempt to help the struggling Basts and to convince the Wilcoxes that some of their prejudices about the lower classes are unfounded.
