As actress Tuppence Middleton leaves Downton Abbey behind to play the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor on stage, she tells Julia Llewellyn Smith how it feels to slip into the diva’s diamonds
Tuppence Middleton’s got a problem. Albeit a uniquely thrilling problem, because she’s gearing up to play Elizabeth Taylor, that most demanding of screen goddesses. A woman who famously said, ‘big girls need big diamonds’, and who, in all her eight decades on this earth, never once cooked breakfast. Who once kept Queen Elizabeth II waiting for 20 minutes, and Princess Margaret – a rival – for 30. Who, when filming Cleopatra in Rome, turned up to only 12 of her 228 shooting days; at the end, she left with three Rolls-Royces for her entourage, six lorries for her furnishings, and three more for her (entirely un-housetrained) pets.