Sienna Miller

• 1. Introduction

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  Sienna Miller very nearly arrived in the world during a ballet. Her mother went into labour in New York while watching a performance of The Nutcracker, and the baby was almost born in the theatre. Miller, born on the 28th of December 1981, grew up to be a British actress, though her path there ran through fashion magazines, tabloid front pages and a sudden retreat from film.

  Her story raises several questions. How does a model from Italian Vogue become one of the most photographed young women in Britain? What happens to an actress when the public cares more about her wardrobe than her work? And what does it take to return from a professional low point with parts that critics took seriously?

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• 2. Models and Labels

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  Josephine Miller, born in South Africa to British parents, was herself a former model. She worked as a personal assistant to David Bowie and later managed the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. Sienna's father, Edwin, was a banker who became an American dealer in Chinese art. The family settled in London when she was 18 months old, and she studied at Heathfield School in Ascot, Berkshire.

  Her own modelling career began when she signed with Tandy Anderson at Select Model Management London. Coca-Cola used her in advertising, and Italian Vogue published her photographs. In the 2003 Pirelli Calendar she posed topless. Covers followed on the American, British, Australian and Portuguese editions of Vogue, along with Nylon, Marie Claire and Porter Edit.

  Commercial contracts came next. The Madrid-based denim label Pepe Jeans London signed her for two years, and its first campaign reached magazines in March 2006, shot by Mikael Jansson with stylist Karl Templer. In February 2009, Hugo Boss Fragrances named her ambassador for its BOSS Orange perfume. The Swedish chain Lindex made her the face of its 1970s-inspired Sienna Hearts Lindex spring campaign in March 2016. Four years later, director Harmony Korine photographed her as a guest at a retro-styled Rome dinner party for Gucci's Cruise 2020 campaign.

  Fashion was not only something she wore. In 2007, she and her sister Savannah, herself a designer, launched a label called Twenty8Twelve, named for Miller's birthdate. Pepe Jeans backed it financially, and the sisters stepped down as co-creative directors in 2012.

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• 3. The Breakthrough Year

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  Miller's screen debut was the romantic comedy South Kensington in 2001, where she appeared opposite Rupert Everett and Elle Macpherson and was credited as Sienna Rose. In 2002 she took supporting parts in High Speed and its follow-up The Ride, and guest-starred in The American Embassy and Bedtime.

  The television drama Keen Eddie, from 2003, gave her a regular role as the combative but caring flatmate of an NYPD detective. It was her first exposure to American audiences. FOX cancelled it after only seven episodes.

  Then came 2004, when two commercial films and a relationship with the actor Jude Law lifted her public profile. In Matthew Vaughn's crime thriller Layer Cake, starring Daniel Craig, she played the love interest of a London cocaine supplier. The New York Times called her "a new It Girl who barely registers on-screen". In Alfie, a remake of Bill Naughton's 1966 film, she played the girlfriend of a cockney limo driver and sex addict, played by Law.

  Miller was not comfortable with the label. She said at the time that she was unhappy about it, because the attention came from the relationship she was in rather than from a film release. On Christmas Day 2004, she and Law became engaged. That December, Vogue put her on its cover and called her "the girl of the year".

  Casanova followed in 2005. She played Francesca, a writer of illegal feminist books and the love interest of Heath Ledger's Casanova, and the film made $37.6 million. Entertainment Weekly praised her modern, smart-girl look. The same year she made her West End debut as Celia in As You Like It at the Wyndham's Theatre. Paul Taylor of The Independent was harsh, writing that she approached an emotion with the finesse of someone beating a carpet.

  The personal side soon turned sour. On the 18th of July 2005, Law publicly apologised to her for an affair with his children's nanny. They tried to repair things, but separated in November 2006.

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• 4. The Independent Stretch

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  Edie Sedgwick, the 1960s socialite and muse to Andy Warhol, was Miller's role in the 2006 drama Factory Girl. Johnny Vaughan of Sun Online called it a heartbreaking cautionary tale in which her star shone brightest. Rotten Tomatoes took a colder view, saying the film treated Sedgwick only superficially despite a dedicated performance.

  In 2007 she appeared in Stardust, Matthew Vaughn's adaptation set around a fictional British town. It cost $65 million and grossed $137 million worldwide. She also played a starlet in Interview, Steve Buscemi's remake of a 2003 film by the Dutch director Theo van Gogh. Critics felt the leads made a simple premise gripping.

  In Pittsburgh in 2006, she shot The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel in which she played a woman involved with a rebellious bisexual man. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited release. During filming, she gave Rolling Stone an interview in which she used a crude nickname for the city and said she needed to stop her indie year and find more glamorous films. Local media parodied her, one headline mocking a semi-famous actress dumping on the 'Burgh. The city's visitors' bureau and other offices had treated the cast and crew generously. Miller apologised and said her words were taken out of context.

  In 2008 she starred beside Keira Knightley in The Edge of Love, playing Caitlin Macnamara, the wife of the poet Dylan Thomas. Reviews were mixed. Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter called it a wonderfully atmospheric tale of love and war. Miller earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the British Independent Film Awards. That same year she voiced a circus fox in the animated film A Fox's Tale and played an undead newlywed in the romantic comedy Camille.

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• 5. Lowest Ebb

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  A fight scene with Rachel Nichols left Miller with a sprained wrist. She slipped on a rubber bullet while filming G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in 2009, in which she played The Baroness. It remains her only mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. She had auditioned because the film did not involve a breakdown, heroin addiction or a death at the end. She wanted something that was simply fun for audiences.

  Critics mostly disliked it, yet it made $302.5 million worldwide. It also earned her a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Supporting Actress. The Irish Independent later said her trajectory had reached its lowest ebb with the film. She told UK Esquire that roles dried up because people did not want to watch films featuring people they disapproved of.

  Miller chose to step away from film for two years and work in the theatre. She explained that she was "sick of myself, to be honest, or sick of that perception of me."

  On Broadway in 2009 she played the title role in Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie. She told The New York Times that being on Broadway was what she had always wanted. The Guardian was measured, saying she mastered the part only intermittently, an accomplishment though an incomplete one.

  In December 2009, reports said she and Jude Law had rekindled their relationship after appearing in separate Broadway shows. They spent that Christmas in Barbados with three of his children. They announced another split in February 2011.

  In 2011, Trevor Nunn directed her in Flare Path at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where she played a former starlet caught in a love triangle. A role of a very different weight was waiting on television.

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• 6. Resurgence

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  Tippi Hedren, the actress Alfred Hitchcock cast in The Birds, became Miller's subject in the 2012 HBO and BBC film The Girl. Miller was in the early stages of pregnancy during production. She spoke with Hedren several times as part of her research, and the two became friends. Live birds were used to recreate the attic scene. Miller told the Radio Times she endured two hours of bird attack, with men off camera throwing seagulls and pigeons at her face.

  The film's reviews were mixed, but Miller's work drew praise. Clive James wrote in The Telegraph that no better choice could have been made. She received nominations for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a miniseries or television film. Her daughter with the actor Tom Sturridge was born on the 7th of July 2012. They dated from 2011 to 2015 and were engaged.

  Journalists called what followed a career revival. Miller credited the change to working with elite directors, saying that once you crack that upper echelon, people root for you.

  In 2014, she played Nancy Schultz, wife of the murdered Olympic gold medallist wrestler Dave Schultz, in Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher. She also played Taya Renae Kyle, wife of the Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, in Clint Eastwood's American Sniper. Both films were highly acclaimed, and American Sniper became the highest-grossing war film of all time.

  In 2015 came a prostitute in Mississippi Grind, a single mother in High-Rise, which earned another British Independent Film Awards nomination, and a sous-chef in Burnt, reuniting her with Bradley Cooper. That February and March she took over as Sally Bowles in Broadway's Cabaret after Emma Stone, performing the final six weeks of the run. The New York Daily News called her performance cocky and steely. She also sat on the jury of the main competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

  In 2016, she played Nina Fawcett, wife of the British geographer Percy Fawcett, in James Gray's The Lost City of Z. Time described her as luminous and astute. In Ben Affleck's Live by Night she was the mistress of a notorious gangster. In 2017 she starred in The Private Life of a Modern Woman at the 74th Venice International Film Festival, then in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at London's Apollo Theatre. At 37, she would soon be asked to carry a film alone.

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• 7. Leading Roles

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  American Woman, from 2018, put Miller at the centre for the first time without a stronger cast around her. She played a single mother raising her grandson after her daughter vanishes. It brought some of the best reviews of her career. She said such opportunities were few and far between for women in film, and that she loved having the space to do everything she wanted with a character. Both that film and the Festival du Cinéma américain de Deauville later honoured her with Film Talent awards, as did the SCAD Savannah Film Festival.

  The same year she played Estella, girlfriend of the baseball catcher turned wartime spy Moe Berg, in The Catcher Was a Spy. In 2019 she starred as a narcotics detective opposite Chadwick Boseman in 21 Bridges. The Guardian said she was channelling Edie Falco from The Sopranos. The film grossed $50 million worldwide, a moderate success.

  Also in 2019 she played Beth Ailes, wife of the television executive Roger Ailes, who was played by Russell Crowe, in the Showtime miniseries The Loudest Voice. Little material existed on Ailes. Miller relied on the script and Gabriel Sherman's book, plus two speeches and a short interview she found on YouTube.

  Television filled more of her schedule in 2022 and 2023, with Anatomy of a Scandal on Netflix, Chivalry on Channel 4 and Extrapolations. In 2024 she appeared in three episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and in February that year she joined the short film Marion as an executive producer. Horizon: An American Saga and a 2026 role in Jack Ryan: Ghost War extend the list.

  Her life changed off screen too. She began dating the actor Oli Green in late 2021. Their daughter was born in December 2023. On the 1st of December 2025, Miller revealed that she was expecting a third child, who was born at the end of April 2026.

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• 8. Scrutiny and Causes

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  Boho chic became the phrase most often attached to Miller's look in the mid-2000s. She told Vogue she kept a laid-back approach to grooming, even cutting her own hair. Her shorter bobbed haircut recalled bohemian fashion of the 1920s. Magazines ranked her constantly. Maxim placed her 48th, 46th, 11th, 27th and 51st on its Hot 100 from 2005 to 2009. AskMen put her 86th and then 2nd in 2005 and 2006, and FHM placed her 63rd in 2006.

  In 2015, the Irish Independent wrote that she had been among the most famous young actresses of her generation but had little credibility in the industry. By 2017 she told the Sydney Morning Herald that people were more focused on her career than her private life and clothes.

  The cost of that attention reached a courtroom. After a High Court hearing in May 2011, News of the World admitted hacking into her phone and she won £100,000 in damages. Later that year, in November, she gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry. She described being 21 and running down a dark street at midnight with ten big men chasing her. The cameras in their hands made it legal, she said, but without the cameras it was a pack of men chasing a woman.

  In November 2021, News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, paid her a settlement over alleged phone hacking. Her lawyer David Sherborne told the court the payout was tantamount to an admission of illegal activity. Outside the High Court on the 9th of December 2021, Miller said The Sun very nearly ruined her life. In 2025, actress Georgia Jay played her in the ITV drama The Hack.

  Miller has also given her name to humanitarian work. She is Global Ambassador for the International Medical Corps, travelling with it to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in April 2009 and blogging about the trip. She visited Haiti with the group after the 2010 earthquake. In 2007 she worked with Global Cool on an eco-friendly campaign, and she is an ambassador for the UK branch of the Starlight Children's Foundation, which supports seriously ill children and their parents.

  On the 1st of July 2007, she spoke at the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium, nearly ten years after Princess Diana's death. Proceeds went to Diana's charities and to those of her sons, Princes William and Harry.

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