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Ahead of a host of thrilling new releases, including the Peaky Blinders film, the actress tells Brooke Theis about her first crush, her most

Rebecca Ferguson has frozen mid-sentence. Her blue eyes are fixed on a large spider crawling rapidly down the wall behind me. “If it jumps out, I might hit it towards you by reflex,” she warns, clenching her fists in mock-defence.

The British-Swedish actress has built a reputation for playing characters that move decisively under pressure – the last time I saw her on screen, she was despatching enemy soldiers with her bare hands as Lady Jessica in the space opera Dune – so it’s somewhat disappointing when the eight-legged intruder sees itself off and there’s no need for action.

We’ve met on a chilly morning at Ferguson’s local café in Richmond, where she is a regular. Fresh from the gym, she’s the picture of health in a terry Rip Curl sweatshirt, leggings and trainers, her hair scooped into a bun, and she sips a green tea as we talk. The London suburb became her permanent base four years ago; she lives here with her husband Rory St Clair Gainer and their seven-year-old daughter Saga, having previously split her time between the UK and Sweden, where her 19-year-old son Isac, from a prior relationship, is based with his father.

Over the past decade, Ferguson has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses, with her films grossing about £1.6 billion in total to date. She has deftly brought a commanding presence to a vast range of complex characters – from a world-class prima donna in The Greatest Showman to a White House intelligence officer in Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite.

This is set to be a busy year for her, with three major projects released in succession: Amazon’s sci-fi thriller Mercy; an adaptation of Enid Blyton’s fantasy tale The Magic Faraway Tree, in which she features as the snaggle-toothed comic villain Dame Snap; and the highly anticipated film version of the gritty crime drama Peaky Blinders. (That’s not to mention Dune’s third instalment later in the year and a new season of Apple TV+’s post-apocalyptic Silo, for which she is both star and executive producer.)

Taking part in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man was “a no-brainer”, says Ferguson. “The characters are all guttural and burdened. That’s what I want.” She was approached by Cillian Murphy to play the mysterious medium Kaulo, an acquaintance of his Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby. But there was one problem. “There was absolutely no chance I could do a Brummie accent,” she says with a laugh. “I would ruin the film.” Instead, she developed a Romani accent for her character, who serves as a compelling catalyst for the plot. Costumed in heavy leather, with a long brunette mane, she is almost unrecognisable in the role.

Perhaps this chameleonic quality is the reason why Ferguson has remained relatively unscathed by fame (she is mostly able to get around without being accosted). It helps, too, that she doesn’t really engage with social media, despite having 1.3 million followers on Instagram. “I started my account five years ago, but it always felt wrong for me. I’ve been playing with it, posting private images, hating when I did, but loving the recognition, then hating that I’m loving the recognition – that constant, bloody juxtaposition…”

Ferguson is unusually candid about how conflicted she is about the nature of celebrity and the sense of validation it can provide. “I think a lot of people wouldn’t verbalise it, because not being recognised and yet working is one of the most incredible things – but it’s also quite harrowing and weird, because there is an ego-boost to being recognised. Sometimes I have moments where I go, ‘Why do I not have paparazzi? Why am I not having to be smuggled out the back exit?’ The older I get, the more I think, ‘God, I’m grateful.’ But then you have to deal with walking down a red carpet and it goes silent because you’re not Timothée [Chalamet] or Zendaya.”

Fortunately, Ferguson knows not to take those red-carpet moments too seriously. At the Rome premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, she jokingly hoisted up the skirt of her black Emporio Armani gown to reveal a comfortable pair of leggings underneath; then, in New York for Dune: Part Two, she accessorised her Olivier Theyskens dress with chain dog collars found last-minute at a pet shop. “You have to have fun with fashion,” she says – though she admits she is not yet entirely at ease on the front row. “I don’t know who I am in those environments. I’m not good at sitting and socialising with other celebrities, scurrying on the surface of conversation. I get anxious.”

The inherent tension between the demands of her industry and Ferguson’s more introspective instincts has evolved from her own story of contrasts. She was born in Stockholm in 1983 to a Swedish father, Olov, who believed strongly in Jantelagen, the Nordic ideology that no one should think themselves special, and a British mother, Rosemary, who Ferguson says was “very eccentric, like Edina from Ab-Fab”. (Rosemary, whose surname Ferguson adopted for her stage name, notably helped ABBA translate their 1974 album Waterloo into English.) “I was constantly thrown between these two worlds because my parents separated when I was two,” she says. “It put a lot on me, never really knowing what I am.” Even being brought up bilingual had its complications. “I kind of have my own language,” she explains. “I will take a Swedish word and anglicise it, to make it into a weird word that doesn’t exist, but makes sense to me. I was bullied for it when I was little, but now it’s just what it is.”

Ferguson’s mother encouraged her creative expression, signing her up for gymnastics, dance and modelling. She attended a specialist music school in Stockholm because of her talent for singing, but says that she “didn’t really fit in anywhere. You would have the cool ones who would sit and play guitar in the yard, then you had the fashion people…” She was shorter than some of her peers and recalls stuffing the heels of her Timberland-style boots with socks. “I did it just to be taller. You know, filling your bra, trying to fit in with some image of womanhood and popularity.” While those adolescent insecurities have receded, they remain in the back of Ferguson’s mind. “Sometimes, I wish I could be who I am today and do it all again, and see what that would be like.”

Of course, hindsight casts a different light on her early experiences, not least her first taste of fame. Ferguson was just 15 when her mother took her to an audition for the Swedish soap opera Nya Tider (‘New Times’). She landed the part of the romantic lead Anna, opposite an actor who was a decade older than her and had a girlfriend. “I was madly in love with him,” she admits. “He was my first love. At that age, trying to understand emotions and the fact that he was with someone else… it was hard. Understanding that it’s not reality when you’re lying there holding each other, it’s just a moment and then you say, ‘Cut!’ Oh my god, my heart was torn out of my chest. I had to learn to put a hard skin on.”

It was a formative time for her professionally as well as emotionally, as she would shoot multiple episodes a day and became adept at learning lines quickly. But, when her storyline ended after two years, her options were limited. She worked behind the scenes in Nya Tider’s production company, then took on a succession of odd jobs at a shoe shop, a Korean supermarket, a restaurant and a hotel. “I needed to earn my own money. I don’t want people to care for me. I don’t want someone to cover for me. You just make it work,” she says. Determined to protect her independence, she used her earnings to pay for acting lessons, “to learn the craft”.

Ferguson doesn’t dwell on the realities of what amounted to more than a decade of grafting – “just getting by”, as she says – but they are a testament to her ambition. During this time, she also had her son Isac at 23 with her first boyfriend Ludwig Hallberg, a holistic therapist 22 years her senior. While the age gap was significant, as she points out, she had long been living the life of an adult by then. “I was very young, but I started working at 15… I was thrown into the deep end of work, maturity and responsibility.”

They split after six years together, during which Ferguson had small parts on screen in Sweden, and one lead, in the 2011 drama A One-Way Trip to Antibes. She got an agent, who sent her to audition for the BBC series The White Queen; she was cast in the title role. “It happened quickly,” she says. “I moved to Bruges to film it three weeks after I got the job.” This turned out to be her breakthrough and she was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2014. Although she lost out to Elisabeth Moss, she caught the attention of Tom Cruise, who was looking for a new co-star for the Mission: Impossible movies.

Ferguson joined the franchise for three of its blockbusters. Despite Cruise’s status as a Hollywood veteran, and hers as a relative newcomer, she says they immediately had a rapport. “He comes with this… purpose. He’s a boy who just loves playing, and offers up a safe and professional set. That’s a really good balance [of qualities] to make you want to try new things.” Those included performing her own stunts, such as abseiling down the Vienna State Opera house. “I was scared of heights, but you always have someone to jump in and take over, which means you can push yourself a little bit more – because at the last second you can always go, ‘Nope!’” She even took some on while pregnant with her daughter in 2018. “I would be fighting, and then I’d run off and vom in a big bag somewhere, have a mint, then run back in.”

Her career has meant filming in locations as far as Morocco, Abu Dhabi and the Arctic, so being a parent has been a challenge, but she is strict about only allowing herself to be away for three weeks at a time. “That was my number one [priority],” she says. And she has brought her experience of the rewards and challenges of motherhood to some of her most assured performances: in both Girl on the Train and Dune, she plays women who are fiercely protective of their offspring, while in A House of Dynamite, she gives a masterful portrayal of a mother who must remain level-headed under the extreme pressure of a nuclear crisis.

The power dynamics on set are an area she constantly negotiates. On the Reign with Josh Smith podcast in 2024, she discussed an incident in which a co-star “screamed” at her on set. She demanded they leave, asking instead to perform to a tennis ball. Theories swirled about who it could have been – she has confirmed it wasn’t Tom Cruise or Hugh Jackman – but really, that wasn’t the point. “It wasn’t about the person. It was about me. It was so scary. I didn’t know then how to go, ‘Hey, can I talk to you privately?’” she says. “Now, I would want to believe that I could have taken this person aside.” She continues: “A lot of people say that we’ve become too woke, but I think, no, it’s great. The pendulum needs to swing to the other side so that we can find a balance in between.”

For now, she is taking control of such dynamics herself, both by initiating her own projects through the production company she runs with her husband Rory and by being selective about the roles she takes on. She has been sent several scripts for consideration – but, as I learn during our conversation, Ferguson is not one to settle. “I look back at my career and I think it’s good, but it’s not 100 per cent. I wouldn’t lie down on my deathbed and be like, ‘I nailed it.’ I’m happy and healthy, my family’s good, but I’m still missing things…”

Ferguson’s definition of success is understanding who she is as an artist and demonstrating what she is capable of. “I love to be challenged by stories that start somewhere, confuse you and take you somewhere else. I want my Anatomy of a Fall. I look at Sandra Hüller and think, ‘Fucking hell, you nailed it, babes.’ That’s where I want to go.” She corrects herself. “That’s where I am going.”

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