Cressida Bonas’s decision to not take up a lifelong role as a perfect princess is already paying off. Last week Prince Harry’s 25-year-old former girlfriend made her theatrical debut in a rain-soaked tent in Hay-on-Wye, playing a bureaucratic singing wolf. Now the Londoner hears that the aspiring actress has landed herself a part in Tulip Fever. It is co-produced by Harvey Weinstein and is one of the most hotly tipped films of 2015.
The 17th-century love story based on Deborah Moggach’s 1999 bestselling novel already boasts in its cast Academy Award-winner Christoph Waltz and model-turning-actress Cara Delevingne. The movie has had a slightly cursed history; filming was just about to start in 2004 when a change in the British tax-break programme caused the production to collapse overnight. But the illicit romance between a portrait painter and his beautiful wealthy muse is now finally heading for the big screen, helmed by The Other Boleyn Girl director Justin Chadwick.
“It’s so clever,” says our film insider. “They’ve cast actual models like Cara and Daisy [Lowe] to play the artists’ models and for the part of the society lady they’ve cast Prince Harry’s ex.”
Friends of Cressida made it clear at the time of her break-up with the fourth-in-line to the throne that she was more interested in having the freedom to create her own career rather than taking a royal’s prearranged path of demure public appearances. Playing a society lady on screen obviously holds far more charm than living out that role for the rest of her life.
