Sienna Miller is gazing wistfully back at me from a meadow. Her honey-blonde hair is softly tousled, her skin is sun-dappled, and she’s wearing a pink boudoir-coded bodice with one chiffon sleeve tumbling seductively off her shoulder as she sits among wild flowers. It’s Virgin Suicides meets ‘70s beauty ad, and it’s so Sienna Miller – except it isn’t, because a few minutes later the real Sienna takes her seat on the Zoom call, wearing a utilitarian white shirt.
Glancing over her shoulder at her campaign shot for Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk in Bloom, she grins and says, “Stick me in a garden with some wildflowers, and it feels like my natural habitat. They wanted to do something that was a little bit more romantic [for this campaign]. There’s such a Hollywood glamour associated with the brand, but this was all in an English country garden. It was a bit more nature, which I feel suits me quite well. The romance in a more organic rural setting is probably more aligned with who I actually am as a person, so it was a good moment for us to start working together.”
Sienna is the new face of Charlotte Tilbury’s limited-edition Blush Balm Lip Tint – a 3-in-1 lipstick, balm and tint that works with your skin’s pH to create a sheer shade unique to you. It launches today and, as one of the first beauty journalists to try it, I can confirm that it does indeed give you the same just-kissed flush as a love-struck teenager.
The boho vibe of the campaign is unmistakable and an interesting 360° for Sienna. In the early Noughties, she was the pin-up for festival-adjacent dresses and circle belts, but, after an intense period of press intrusion, ‘boho chic’ became a label she rallied against. “I’m fine with it now,” she says. “I think it’s really funny – boho chic feels like it just was here for me, but I’m in total denial about how fast time is passing. It’s funny seeing my 13-year-old [Marlowe, her daughter with ex-boyfriend Tom Sturridge] suddenly in Moroccan belts. I think I reacted to being put in a box with those labels at that time, when I just felt like I had no control over any of my identity. Any kind of labelling, I had a reaction to.”
In our Glamour interview, Sienna isn’t evasive about her past. But perhaps being at the heart of today’s more grown-up boho revival is a kind of proof that she’s now at peace with it – whether it’s being decked out from head to toe in Chloé or wafting around in Charlotte’s rolling meadow.
Here, the actress talks about why she’s calmer in her 40s, the speedy makeup hacks she swears by, modern motherhood and ageing on her terms.
I’ve always used lipstick on my eyelids and my cheeks, too.
Whatever lipstick I have on, I’ll match it to the bridge of my nose, cheeks and eyes to pull the whole look together. I’ll be honest, the tint of the Blush Balm Lip Tint is ideal because you can use it in three different areas, and it’s skincare as well as makeup. And that just suits me. I don’t want to be lugging around a million different things. So that will definitely be in my makeup bag, alongside a Charlotte Tilbury Foxy Brown Lip Cheat, a lip liner that I use for freckles. Jaw line freckles really make me look better because my natural freckles are slightly blended into one large pigment situation.