Tallulah Harlech

English actress, model and society-type Tallulah Harlech’s voice skips and frolics as she excitedly plots ways to bring the worlds of fashion and film closer together. “I’m working on a film for Vogue.com, which they’ve never ever done. I’ve managed to get a massive production company called Future Films to come on board, and we had a meeting with the editor of Vogue.com last week to go though how we were going to do it. There’s a script, there’s dialogue, I’m very excited about it.”

A role in fashion would have seemed like the obvious route for Tallulah, whose mother is Lady Amanda Harlech, creative collaborator with John Galliano before taking a similar role with Karl Lagerfeld. However, despite the party invitations and hefty connections, Tallulah believes her name is a mixed blessing. “People definitely take me less seriously. Close friends who work along side my mum are endlessly saying, ‘the fashion industry is there for you, it’s so viable, you’re good at it, why don’t you just do it?’ They rack their brains trying to work out why I’m trying to fit this square peg through a triangle, trying to be an actor.”

Having studied acting at the Lee Strasberg school in New York – which she playfully describes as, “like a finishing school… full of wannabe people who don’t really want to go to university” – Tallulah is certainly well placed for bringing these two worlds together. “I use fashion as a way to help myself up with my acting career, I try to play them hand in hand as much as possible. I’m dong a fashion film where they said ‘we just want you to wear the spring/summer 2012 clothes.’ And I said, ‘wait, how can I inject acting into this?’ So instead of having an overlay of music, I did a Shakespeare monologue of Desdemona’s speech.”

It’s acting rather than the fashion world that excites her most. “As far as I can remember, it’s always the thing I’ve wanted to do. I was always a little performer, and I was always told I was really good, it was the affirmation that gave me, which I have subsequently learned as I’ve gotten older is not the route a healthy mind!”

She’s certainly not hiding from her name. Tallulah’s most recent film, 'Dame Judy', was directed by her brother Jasset and, and Lady Amanda herself wrote the script for Tallulah’s Vogue.com film project. “It’s the first screenplay she’s ever written. And I’m the only person in it which is wonderful, it makes it all about me!”