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A good read on Team Dockery

TBH I hope she doesn't stay past Series 4. Michelle's more than ready to take on Hollywood.

I've been so careful to keep Team Dockery's names out of my posts, but that's the Daily Mail for you. They're not up to date about certain things though. Her life has never been more golden.

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The £25,000 makeover that says Lady Mary Crawley's leaving Downton Abbey for Hollywood

By Alison Boshoff

PUBLISHED: 20:21 EST, 17 January 2013

Her gleaming emeralds were Bulgari, her spectacular dress was designed by Alexandre Vauthier and she had a team of Hollywood’s finest working on every aspect of her style.

It’s a long way from Downton Abbey — and, indeed, from her childhood hometown of Romford — but as Michelle Dockery worked the red carpet at this week’s Golden Globes, she looked ready to leave her character of Lady Mary Crawley far behind.

So who was behind her transformation and why did Dockery make such a big deal of her nomination for a Globe? She didn’t win — indeed, she was always unlikely to against Homeland’s Claire Danes. And let’s not forget that her co-star Dame Maggie Smith, also nominated, didn’t even bother to attend the ceremony.

The answer is that this is Dockery’s big moment to make the leap from domestic television star to Hollywood player. Much time and effort is being invested by some of the industry’s biggest players into turning her into a bona fide Hollywood glamour girl. Team Dockery is, by all accounts, becoming a rather formidable machine.

And although she is committed to appearing in the fourth series of Downton — which will be filmed from February to July this year — you would have to be a brave punter to bet on her hanging around after that.

For it turns out that, just like her former co-star Dan Stevens before her, Dockery, 31, has started to pave the way for an exit. And her new super-groomed look is just the beginning of her grand plan.

First, that dress. Worth nearly £4,000, it secured her a place on the prestigious Harper’s Bazaar Top Ten best-dressed list and was secured for her by her new stylist, Micaela Erlanger, who is based in New York.

Erlanger is a big acquisition for Dockery. One of the most influential stylists around, she doesn’t come cheap — her services for an event like this are said to cost about £10,000.

In this instance, Erlanger notified the designer a fortnight before the event what Dockery wanted, and then secured the loan of the dress, plus the hire of the suite of jewellery (worth £300,000) to go with it.

‘There’s a lot of prep involved — we’re talking weeks!’ Erlanger said before the event. ‘From talking to the designers, to getting in touch and reserving the best looks and getting the samples in and then sending the samples out, and swapping, and fittings — it’s crazy.’

Dockery’s soft, wavy hair-do was done by Mara Roszak, and her dewy make-up by Jordan Bree Long, both well-regarded professionals. In all, given the costs of hiring such a team, plus their expenses, the final figure for her big night make-over is likely to have crested £25,000.

Erlanger was overheard crowing that she had wanted to ‘kick it up a notch’ for her client, which she certainly did.

Dockery’s night ended at the Soho House member’s club in West Hollywood at an ultra-exclusive party — other guests were all very much of a Hollywood flavour, and included Twilight star Robert Pattinson, his on-off girlfriend Kristen Stewart, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Bridesmaids’ star Kristen Wiig and Superbad’s Judd Apatow.

As well as this glossy posse, Dockery has hired some serious backroom wheeler-dealers. She acquired the services of Sandra Chang, a well-known talent agent in Hollywood, who is looking after her interests out there.

Ms Chang also polishes the prospects of Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games, and Sam Worthington of Avatar — two of the hottest young talents in town. It’s said that Chang’s firm, Anonymous Content, footed the bill for Dockery’s Globes’ makeover.

But it’s clear the momentum is heading in one way only. Dockery has just finished filming a movie with Liam Neeson called Non-Stop. It’s a big budget commercial blockbuster, with a budget of £31 million, and she is the second lead after Tinseltown stalwart Julianne Moore. The producer is Joel Silver, of The Matrix, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard fame.

Leo Barraclough of the screen bible Variety tells me: ‘Non-Stop is a good big-budget action film and Liam Neeson has a history of doing these things very well and then they turn into franchises like Taken, which would be fantastic for Michelle Dockery without a doubt.

‘It’s a very good movie for her. It looks as if she is on the brink of making the cross-over.

‘This is no surprise because Downton is a big deal in America and is especially influential in Hollywood. This means that the cast, like Michelle, are becoming desirable to casting directors.

‘The fact that she has been nominated for both a Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe is significant. People take notice of it and it very much matters.’

I’m told that in recent weeks Dockery has auditioned for several high-profile films, among them one titled Foxcatcher, which she lost out on to Sienna Miller.

She is also said to have auditioned for an adaptation of the Sondheim musical Into The Woods, which James Corden is pencilled in to star in. She was narrowly pipped to the role of Cinderella by actress Anna Kendrick, best known for Up In The Air, for which she was Oscar-nominated.

Such is the buzz around Dockery that she has even entered the frame as a possible contender to appear opposite Johnny Depp in the remake of the Thirties detective classic, The Thin Man.

Clearly, Dockery’s manager Sandra Chang has been busy getting her charge through all the right doors.

And you can see from her media profile, which now includes a photoshoot in this month’s In Style magazine, an interview in Vanity Fair and another shoot in Harper’s Bazaar, that she is starting to make genuine inroads into the Hollywood showbusiness scene.

Team Dockery has its players on this side of the Atlantic too, of course. Her London publicist is the showbusiness veteran Ciara Parkes, who has looked after Sienna Miller and Jude Law for years.

Happily, Dockery is a nice enough person to see the colossal good fortune of her fame and success.

She told an interviewer: ‘I was in a café in New York waiting for my sister, and a couple next to me were anticipating the last episode of Downton. I was sitting there contentedly, listening, thinking, “This is amazing.”

‘Then when they got up to leave they recognised me and told me how much they loved the show. I remember texting Dan Stevens. To be on the other side of the world and have that effect was something.’

Indeed, this is her lifelong dream. The Essex girl has yearned to be an actress since childhood. Her father, Michael, is a lorry driver turned environmental analyst and her mum, Lorraine, used to be a shorthand typist.

Her lovelife has been less dreamy. She began dating Holby City actor Joseph Millson — divorced with two children — in the spring of last year. The romance ended amid some acrimony on Millson’s Twitter account in September.

Millson tweeted: ‘Stop wasting your time on the ones who don’t deserve you. Delete delete delete. Photos, emails, texts. Cleaning out.’

No doubt it was painful for Dockery. But the romantic failure has left her free to pursue the many opportunities which are coming her way.

Illustrator David Downton who drew portraits of her for Vanity Fair, said that the relatively late strike of fame has made her value it all the more.

‘She’s worked. She’s 31. She’s ready,’ he said. ‘There’s a sense with her of “Isn’t this great? This is a golden hour!” And I love that in a person, when they know.’

She responded: ‘I do know, and I relish it as much as I can. I’ve never been someone who expects too much, I guess to avoid the disappointment. And I know it will end at some point. So I try not to let anything dampen how amazing it all is.’

And — as anyone who saw her laughing with her friend Benedict Cumberbatch during the Globes ceremony, and leaning over to swap jokes with Joaquin Phoenix can tell you — superstardom suits her very well indeed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2264271/The-25-000-makeover-says-Michelle-Dockerys-leaving-Downton-Hollywood.html#ixzz2IIusVvW7

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