Andrea Riseborough

Andrea Riseborough, photographed Feb. 1 at 61 Sun Studio in London, has been performing on the stage since she was 7 years old. “It was addictive,” she says. Photographed by Charlotte Hadden Andrea Riseborough — the shapeshifting actress whose name is on everyone’s lips — has lived in Los Angeles since 2010. But right now she’s back in her native England, where she’s filming the HBO miniseries The Palace , a period political satire co-starring Kate Winslet. A swanky hotel tucked discreetly at the end of a narrow alleyway in London’s Soho district serves as her temporary home. Riseborough, 41, enters the hotel’s busy restaurant precisely at the agreed-upon hour — 3:30 p.m. Tea time, although she will be drinking coffee. Nothing in her demeanor suggests someone who nine days earlier had been nominated for an Academy Award — her first, no less, after 20 prolific years of dues-paying. She is petite, practically swimming in a striped wool overcoat. Her hair is cropped boyishly short — this for another recent role, playing British Vogue editor Audrey Withers in Lee . Right now, however, it gives her a whiff of Joan of Arc. She takes a seat and removes a black mask, exposing a wan smile. As this is Riseborough’s first major interview since that surprise nomination — but arranged before the backlash that followed it — she is aware that anything she utters over the next two hours could easily boomerang back to wound her. When asked questions about the awards campaign or the conversations about race and privilege it’s sparking, she hesitates, preferring to address those matters in a later conversation (which she will, via email). In this moment, however, she can’t even concede to being happy about it. The Oscars long have had a knack for stirring up creative controversy. But this brouhaha — call it l’Affaire Riseborough — is different. For starters, it erupted not during the ceremony but on Jan. 24, Oscar nominations morning, when Riseborough — a screen vet (she’s a favorite of auteurs like Mike Leigh, Armando Iannucci and Alejandro G. Iñárritu), if not a household name — was one of five lead actresses whose name was read aloud by Riz Ahmed. That the film she starred in was To Leslie , an ultra-low-budget indie that grossed only $27,000 in its single week in theaters, served to enhance the shock value. How did it happen? Hollywood awards strategists will surely dissect the phenomenon for generations. What’s clear is that a word-of-mouth Hail Mary campaign aimed directly at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ acting branch and led by a raft of such A-listers as Winslet, Charlize Theron and Gwyneth Paltrow — with even competitors like Cate Blanchett jumping in — allowed Riseborough to clinch the nomination. At first, Riseborough’s triumph was trumpeted as a watershed moment for independent film and a stake to the heart of the conventional wisdom that only studio-backed pictures have the resources to score Oscar nominations. But that uplifting narrative quickly morphed into something more contentious. With Black performers completely shut out of the best actress race — notably The Woman King ‘s Viola Davis and Till ‘s Danielle Deadwyler, two favorites on the 2023 circuit — questions arose as to how and why Hollywood’s ruling class had rallied so enthusiastically around Riseborough. Pointed accusations — of white privilege, cronyism, elitism — were hurled. All of it has added up to a very peculiar Hollywood controversy, one that could only have erupted in these very complicated times — amid the rise of social media, the ever-raging culture wars and, ironically, cinema’s waning relevance, where a digital screening room and some well-placed endorsements managed to do what millions of studio marketing dollars could not. “It’s been confusing,” Riseborough offers, her brow furrowed. “And it’s wonderful the film’s getting seen. I suppose it’s a really bright ray of light. When any of us engage in anything, we want for that