|
|
When the Sismeys picked their childrens' names they had classic literature on their minds. They may have wanted to instil in their daughter some resemblance to her namesakes or they may have just liked how they sounded together, but although Eliza may have been named after the leading ladies of Pygmalion and Les Miserables it would be an entirely different heroine who would come to define her life. John and Kathy Sismey, of number twenty-two Girton Close, weren't exactly the most perfectly normal family in the street. High school sweethearts from the market town of Malton in North Yorkshire, the two were prompted to move down to Suffolk when John joined the army. They married young, Kathy took a job at the local primary school, and they started trying for a family — to no avail. Two years of nothing was followed by the revelation that the Sismeys would likely never conceive naturally. The couple were twenty-four years old and left with a decision to make. It was their second round of IVF that brought success -- twice over, even. Oliver Atticus and Eliza Cosette were born in April 1990 in that order and life would, of course, never be the same. When Ellie talks about her childhood with whomever is asking about it this week, she can only remember it as being fairly ordinary up until the point that she auditioned for one of the biggest film franchises to exist. Her town was small; everyone was connected to everyone in less than six degrees. The military family community was such that there was always someone there for the children of the town, and the 1990s weren’t stricken with armed conflicts that dragged her father away for extended periods of time. Life was a far cry from the glamorous world of filmmaking; quiet and homely and serene. And, naturally, Eliza was regularly wishing that one day things would get a little more interesting. 'A little more interesting' is an odd phrase. Eliza, of course, meant more exciting. She read Harry Potter like every other child in the country and it wasn't unheard of for Ellie to spend her days pretending to be Hermione Granger, wrapped up in her fantasies of Hogwarts and Quidditch hoping that some day she'd get a letter that would spell out the same thing. But Eliza didn't need a letter. An open casting call for the film adaptation buzzed across the country for kids between ten and twelve who fell in the lucky age bracket that meant they would be considered. Lizy's family agreed to let her audition, probably under the assumption that she'd never get the part. A form was filled out, a tape was made, and then she was asked to go down to London for further meetings. That process was relatively informal from what she remembers, especially in comparison to the kind of auditions she's experienced since, but she read for a few different characters. Hermione, Ginny, Lavender Brown; each change of identity felt like a step further away from the small-town girl back home up north. Then, after a week of attention from the producers, she returned to Suffolk, to her brother, to school, and it was as though it had never even happened. How long did it take until she found out the life-altering truth? She can't remember specifically -- as a ten-year-old it felt like an extraordinarily long amount of time, but exaggeration was the fuel of her youth. It could have been a few weeks, maybe a month, but any indignation about the time taken to inform her was forgotten as soon as the actual informing occurred. Eliza Cosette, named for two famous female literary characters, was going to be the face of the most famous female literary character of the decade. The validated protagonist, the escape from the small-town, the happy ending -- that would be the part where the novel ended. It's not where life ends though, obviously. She started filming for Harry Potter in 2000. In 2001 the UK joined the war in Afghanistan. As a more senior member of the army, John Sismey was deployed almost immediately and this provided the backdrop for much of her early years as Hermione Granger. When Ellie was on set, life was a whirlwind of magic and fun and insanity, but when she was at home there was a continuous undertone of worry. Throw in all the ordinary trials and tribulations of puberty and being a teenager and it makes for an adolescence like no other. Paparazzi, rumours, another six month tour for her father... as nostalgic as she may become for those days of youth, they weren't easy. Indeed, there was a time when Eliza gave serious consideration to dropping out of the remaining films. (She was (thankfully) talked out of it by her brother, parents, and the co-stars she had come to consider to be family. Could she really watch someone else play Hermione?) The end of an era came to pass in 2011 with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II and it was equal parts sad and exciting. The hard work and accomplishment that the final film represented, ten years of unwavering efforts, it was amazing to share that with the world but the Harry Potter safety blanket was officially no longer in service. Now was the time to decide how the rest of her future was going to pan out and for Eliza that was a choice she didn't feel entirely ready to make. Offers for work were coming in thick and fast off the back of the exposure she'd received as the famous witch but that same exposure had left Lizy's confidence in her identity away from Hermione Granger in tatters. Her agent encouraged her to take a few tentative steps into other roles while she worked out where her head was; "keeping her options open" was the phrase of the moment. However, for a large chunk of the immediate aftermath of Deathly Hallows, Eliza Sismey was putting serious consideration into the idea of taking an indefinite hiatus. Those thoughts of giving up weren't prompted because she didn't love acting. Career decisions made by ten year olds rarely have any sticking power, but Ellie did genuinely love getting to be somebody else for a while. Her unconventional childhood only perpetuated her want to inhabit other people's lives too; get to know how they operated and lived. And yet... she'd never experienced any real normality. She knew how to worry about her family, and she knew how to play a child star, but (rather embarrassingly) all of her experiences of normal twenty-somethings came from films. When Deathly Hallows wrapped, then, Ellie spent some time with her family. She got to know her brother's university friends. She traveled and learned independence and de-scheduled her life as much as she possibly could. In some ways it was yet another acting role -- Lizy certainly prefers structure, control, understanding. She takes herself more seriously than she'd like, and though fun should always be on the agenda it should probably be prioritised below safety and sensibleness. The freedom was nice, certainly not stressful, and she felt as carefree and 'normal' as someone with her history would be able to be. And then she tried again. Great things are on the horizon for the twenty-four year old from a small town in Suffolk who got lucky in the millennium to land the most coveted role in Great Britain -- but she'll never escape Hermione Granger. She knows that. She embraces it. She's even quite thankful for it. She's accomplished a lot in life already, and that's not to say that she can't go on to accomplish more, but there's a lot less pressure. She can just have fun with it now. Or, you know, she can try to. |