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Ella is featured in Marie Claire Magazine for January 2018. We have added the photographs by Kate Davis-Macleod plus the scans to the gallery…

Are you staying in L.A.?
I’ve got some really good friends who live in Malibu, so I just extended my trip for a couple of days. So that’s where I am at the moment. The house is literally right next to the beach. My agent keeps being like, “Ella, stop tanning.” I’m like, “No! You will never stop me tanning.” I love a little bit of sun. I mean, I’m from England. What do you expect?

Did you watch Tim Burton movies when you were growing up?
Absolutely. I didn’t watch Beetlejuice when I was a kid, because my mum said it was too scary—I watched it when I was 11. But I grew up on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, which are quite different from Beetlejuice. It’s not as gothic-y, but he’s still doing his fantastical, otherworldly, colorful imagery. People used to ask me, “Who is your dream director?” and every time, no hesitation, I was like, “Tim Burton. Straight up.” When you find out you’ve been cast in a Tim Burton movie, every actor is going to freak out a little bit, because it’s such a big deal. His movies are just so stylized and fantastical, so it wasn’t naturalistic acting. That was something I had to learn on this job that I’d never really had to do before. I had to be sort of freakish and underlying-ly creepy as possible.

How do you think the fans of Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children will react to Emma being an air controller as opposed to the fire controller that she is in the book?
That’s a great question, and I’m glad you asked it because it’s something I’ve had to deal with a lot over the past months as the trailers have come out. I even put out a statement just to try and chill everyone out a little bit. When I first read the script, I had read the books, and my brothers had read the books. I was attracted to playing a fiery character. Every female actor’s dream is to play a fierce character [like Emma in the book]. But, first of all, you have to trust Tim Burton. He’s such a genius, and he’s got so much experience that you need to say, “Screw it. I’m just going to put all my faith in Tim.” But more than that, the love story between Jake and Emma is so sweet—it’s a first love—and it romantically makes more sense for her to be so light and so floaty. And, it gave me a bigger opportunity to create this character arc, because if she’s so fierce and she’s so strong at the start, she has nowhere really to go, but if you make her timid and gentle at the start, she can discover her own strength. Listen, the film is based on the book; it’s not the book. I remember when I was younger I was obsessed with the Harry Potter series. And I sat on the sofa when I was a kid, going through the first book, trying to match it to the film, and 10 minutes in I was so confused and upset. My dad was like, “Ella, what’s wrong?” I said, “This stupid film is nothing like the book.” And so I understand why diehard fans of the book are going to be upset. Especially when you’ve made that connection to a character or a book. She’s very relatable, Emma, so of course people are going to be very protective over her. It’s still going to be a fantastic movie, and I actually think that people will be pleasantly surprised by the changes.

Since you can float, did you have to do anything that was high up?
Yeah, I did. I actually had experience in a harness attached to wires—floating in the air—when I did Maleficent [who could fly], so by the time I did Miss Peregrine, the stunts guy was like, “Oh, are you going to be OK in the air?” I was like, “Are you kidding me? Put me in there.”

I noticed that you have skydived before.
Yes! How did you know that?

I lurked your Instagram.
You did lurk. No one’s ever really spoken to me about that. I went traveling at the beginning of this year to Australia and New Zealand. I’m a strong believer that you need to live your life in order to be a good actor. My friends were going skydiving, and I was so scared. Part of my brain clicked, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to go.” It’s a sensory overload. Your whole body is having a panic attack, and your [mind is] calm. You’re just like, “I’m just going to jump out of a plane. No biggie.” Go and do it if you haven’t already. Everybody should go skydiving. It’s does great things for your self-esteem. I left school last year—I’m nearly 20—and it’s that awkward phase between being a teenager and being an adult, where you’re just trying to figure everything out. When you’re skydiving, and you’re up at 5,000 feet, it doesn’t matter—it gives you a lot of perspective.

I wanted to ask you about WildLike, which just came out on Netflix, about a girl who is molested by her uncle.
WildLike will always have such a special place in my heart. I read four or five scripts a week, minimum, and you develop this very good radar for what’s for you or not. This movie, I couldn’t put the script down. I was totally obsessed. The filming was three months in Alaska. All the cast and crew were really good friends. I was 15 when I filmed this movie. To take on that type of material when I was 15, I was scared. I didn’t know if I could do it. Frank Hall Green—the director—just brought out this incredibly emotional performance from me. That scene that I did when she’s on the phone to her uncle, I had a complete meltdown, and all these years of my own personal issues just came out. I’d say that was the job where I learned how to act. I came back from that, and I was a totally different person. I chopped all my hair off really short. I came back speaking with an American accent. All my friends were like, “Who are you? What have you done with Ella?”

What can you tell me about Access All Areas? The filming of that was done in the midst of a music festival, Bestival, which was probably really fun.
It was mental. I’ve never filmed at a music festival, and I’ll never do it again. Especially at a music festival in the U.K., where everyone wants to be funny and jump out in front of the camera, and be like, “Hey guys, wanna film me?” But surprisingly the footage actually came out really good. It’s a movie about four young people who run away to a music festival, and their parents chase after them. It’s a musical film, so there are three or four songs, and I get to sing a couple. I wanted to be a singer when I was a little girl. I think the actual story itself is a really lovely coming-of-age film. It’s British comedy, which is a very particular sense of humor, but I think most people get it. It’s very dry humor. It’ll probably be out late this year or early next year.

How did you get involved in Educate2Eradicate—your nonprofit that focuses on female genital mutilation and forced marriages?
Long story short, about two years ago, I met this incredible young lady [Arifa Nasim] who is an activist and philanthropist. She was the U.K. youth delegate to the U.N. I was like, “How have you done these incredible things at such a young age?” And she was like, “How have you?” It was an instant “bromance.” She was doing work for FGM and child and early forced marriage, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a clue what those things were. I watched her do a talk at a school, and I couldn’t sleep that night. I read this book the next day about FGM. The reason why I’m so passionate about FGM and forced marriage is because it’s such an underexposed issue. Nobody fights for it. Hardly any celebrities will outwardly speak for these issues, and it’s because it’s considered culturally sensitive. I don’t think cultural sensitivity is a reason to brush these issues under the carpet.

And you were the host of TEDxTEEN. Do you feel like you’ve been more of an activist lately?
I can tell you how it started. I did a movie called The Journey Is the Destination. I filmed it in South Africa last year for six weeks, and it’s this incredible true story about a young photojournalist called Dan Eldon, who was stoned to death in Somalia in 1993. But the movie doesn’t focus on his death. It talks about all the incredible, wonderful, philanthropic things that he did when he was alive. For example, when he was 14, he raised $5,000 for his sister’s best friend to have heart surgery. So I met the most fantastic people that wanted to continue Dan’s work in the form of creative activism, and I spent a lot of time with Dan Eldon’s mom, Kathy Eldon, who had set up this foundation called Creative Visions. That’s what inspired me to start doing active things rather than just talking. That’s why I wanted to get involved with TEDxTEEN. I think that work that young people do is incredible, and I will never, ever stop supporting that.

We have added the Schon magazine scans and feature to the gallery … you can also find the photoshoot by Mark Rabadan here.

We have HQ scans of Ella’s first magazine cover, for Wonderland magazine…

Ella Purnell pulls down her denim overalls, baring her torso and belly button ring. “I love this look,” the 19-year-old actress says, giggling, as a photographer snaps shots of her inside a Los Angeles studio. She flashes her Adidas Superstar kicks, laces undone, as she twists into different poses like a pretzel. “I love the ’90s!” she yells, twirling her newly-curled locks. “I love everything about it! There is something so beautiful about the grunge and carelessness. The style, the mood, the music, the fashion. Kate Moss, Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp in their prime!”

Just minutes later, Purnell swaps looks, this time donning a Phlemuns sweater dress and vintage earrings. Her hair is slicked back from a mixture of smoothing balm, elixir restore and repair oil. It looks like she dived into a swimming pool and popped out five seconds later. Her face is sometimes buried in her iPhone, but she’s chipper and bubbly, smiling ear to ear. She’s fresh off the plane from East London and psyched to be visiting the States for ten days doing publicity for her new fantasy movie Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, out this Friday. She admits that she could never do modeling professionally, even if she’s good at it. “I don’t care what I look like,” she admits. “I don’t dress up much. I wear trainers and jeans. I would probably get so tired of people talking about my appearance all the time.”

It’s an ironic statement for a girl who got her start modeling as a baby. She switched to acting at age nine, when she started taking classes at the Sylvia Young Theatre School. Two years later, she auditioned for the play Oliver! and was cast in a London performance for one year. She says she absolutely loves theater and has also be into singing since a very young age. She would often strum on the guitar and play piano while singing classical tunes in French and German. She describes herself back then as a shy girl with glasses and greasy hair, sharing moments by herself reading in a corner at school. She didn’t like sports or socializing much, but she had a big imagination. She would play spy games with her only friend in grade school. “Everyone would think, ‘What are these girls doing?’ But we didn’t care. I was weird and didn’t want to be cool. I was never the popular girl,” she says. “I wasn’t really bullied, I enjoyed being by myself. It taught me how to be independent.”

Purnell received her first taste of movie stardom when she played younger versions of Keira Knightley’s character in 2010’s Never Let Me Go and Angelina Jolie’s title protagonist in Walt Disney’s 2014 Maleficent. Most recently, she wrapped the aforementioned Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, directed by Tim Burton. She spent six months bringing life to character Emma Bloom, a girl who has the ability to manipulate air. For a week straight, she performed in a large tank surrounded by a green screen as the camera captured her underwater. Interestingly, her biggest fear is drowning, which nearly happened to her in ocean when she was 13 years old (she was rescued by a passing boatman).

On set, not everything went to plan. Tim Burton smashed his head into a lighting device, and he ended up going to the hospital. They thought he might have had a concussion, but he quickly recovered. Another day, the set got so smoky that the sprinklers turned on in the electrical room and everyone scrambled to get the equipment out. Still, the film was completed and looks to be classic Burton. “He’s a genius. He’s an easy, beautiful and kind soul,” Purnell says of the director. “He’s so smart and open to everything: your interpretation, views and opinions,” she adds. “With his talent and level of fame, he doesn’t have to be that way. But he is so wonderful and humble. He would always give me great scene advice like, ‘Don’t let your sentences tail off.’ I appreciated that.”

As she twists her petite frame into different poses like a pretzel, Purnell radiates with confidence, and that shy kid in school feels like a lifetime away. She credits her current poise and sense of self with something her mother taught her when she was young — that every woman is beautiful. “If someone is going to say I’m too skinny, I don’t care. I grew a thick enough skin to deflect from it,” she declares. “I’m just happy with myself and where I am at in my life right now.”

Ella and Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children were featured in SFX Magazine’s November 2016 issue…

We have added x04 scans of Ella’s interview feature in Malibu magazine…

We have added some new scans of Ella from Total Film and Marie Claire to the gallery…

We have added some photos/scans from Ellas appearance in Nylon Magazines September issue …

We have added some scans from Empire and Total Film magazine…