InStyle scans

Thandie Newton WOWS on new InStyle cover shoot

Thandie Newton reveals her secret to keeping trim at 37... yoga and working out hard in the gym
By Lizzie Smith

Posing provocatively in an open fronted white blazer, Thandie Newton looks the picture of unachievable Hollywood perfection.
But the 37-year-old mother-of-two claims there's no secret to her amazing figure.
It's simply down to good genetics, hard work at the gym and yoga.
No flirt: Thandie Newton says she doesn't use her sexuality in her relationships with other men, and has never dated an actor
(she lived in LA with Jude Law..and went out with Brad Pitt...Quinn)

'I’m a Jivamukti yoga freak – it’s food for my soul,' she says. 'When I’m not working, I’ll drop Rip off at school and Nico at nursery, then I go to yoga.

'I also have an amazing personal trainer who I see whenever I can. His name is Liston Wingate-Denys.'
Jivamukti yoga involves physically stimulating routines, along with meditation, Sanskrit chanting, Yogic philosophical teachings and deep relaxation.

Thandie, the daughter of a Zimbabwean Princess of the Shona tribe and an English father, is the mother of Ripley, nine, and Nico, five.
Despite forging a career as an A-list actress with roles in films such as Crash, W and 2012, Thandie has managed to avoid becoming tabloid fodder.
The Cambridge graduate, who grew up in Cornwall, has been happily married to writer Ol Parker for 11 years.
In her latest interview with InStyle magazine she says she doesn't flirt with men.
'I’ve never dated an actor, just had the odd fling,' she said. 'Isn’t that weird?
'I don’t flirt with people – a long time ago, I stopped using my sexuality to have a relationship with people.

'I don’t think you really get a sense of me, sexually, and that’s why I have really great relationships with straight men.'
And she says he is supportive of her work - even when it involves intimate sex scenes.
'He heard it from my point of view, which is that love scenes are unnatural and not something that I leap out of bed in the morning to rush off to do,' she said.








Introducing InStyle’s new cover girl: Thandie Newton

Thandie Newton had every InStyler wishing they were her at the recent cover shoot for the December issue.

Not only is she intelligent (she studied Anthropology at Cambridge) and a Bafta-winner (Crash), she’s also open and down to earth (yes, that was the f-word that slipped out a couple of times!).

The RocknRolla actress was impossibly stunning for the shoot, working heavenly Chanel and fashion-forward Louis Vuitton to weep-worthy effect.

And how does the mum of two girls keep a body a 20-year-old would wish for at 37? ‘That’s genetic!’ she laughs, ‘and I’m a Jivamukti yoga freak – it’s food for my soul.

‘When I’m not working, I’ll drop Rip off at school and Nico at nursery, then I go to yoga. I also have an amazing personal trainer who I see whenever I can.’

And it certainly pays off!

For the full Thandie interview, where she opens up about love, life, fashion and being friends with Oprah, grab the December issue of InStyle – out

2012 Premiere Los Angeles

other magazine finds

Vibe magazine

Thandie Newton on Guy Ritchie, racism in Hollywood and why Oliver Stone is 'crazy'

Thandie Newton on Guy Ritchie, racism in Hollywood and why Oliver Stone is 'crazy'
By Martyn Palmer
Last updated at 9:00 PM on 31st October 2009

She's the Cambridge graduate who studied for her finals during the Cannes Film Festival, believes she was exploited on her first film and has no time for Gordon Ramsay
'I've experienced racism in Hollywood but not as conflict or in a threatening way, just the ignorance of people,' said Thandie Newton
Thandie Newton is small boned, beautiful and looks as fragile as a bird of paradise but she's certainly no pushover. For her role in disaster blockbuster 2012 - whose central premise is that the end of the world starts on December 21 2012, as predicted by the ancient Mayan civilisation - she had to spend days submerged in a water tank 'the size of a swimming pool', filming scenes of floods that follow devastating earthquakes when the planet's tectonic plates shift.
She grew up in Penzance, the daughter of a Zimbabwean mother and an English father, and started acting at 16, keeping her career on track while attending Downing College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2.1 in anthropology. She won a Bafta for best supporting actress in Crash and has also starred in Mission: Impossible II, The Pursuit of Happyness and RocknRolla. She has two daughters, Ripley, nine, and Nico, five, is married to director Ol Parker and turns 37 on Friday.

I was studying for my finals at Cambridge during the Cannes Film Festival.
I went to a party on the beach for the film I was in, Jefferson In Paris, but I didn't get drunk because I knew I had to revise. I wasn't going to the college bar and having fun, so I probably ended up working more than most people. I carried on making films while I was at Cambridge. I don't regret it because if I hadn't, maybe I wouldn't be an actress.

They paid me just $5,000 for my first film, Flirting.
It should have been a lot more, but how was I to know? It was major exploitation. These days you get a first-class ticket if you are working on a movie but I flew economy all the way to Australia and back. I was hanging out after doing my GCSEs and it came totally out of the blue. After it finished I went back to school.

Thandie in a scene from disaster blockbuster 2012
The Mayan calendar finishes its 13th cycle in 2012 and after that there's nothing.
I was a bit nervous when I heard about the Mayan prophecies for my new film. And then someone reassured me that it's all been disproved. I think 2012 is about appreciating the moment and the simple things, the value of relationships and the value of the people that we love. It's also a great adventure.

Guy Ritchie is an acquired taste.
But I like him. He is a no-messing-about kind of director (she worked with him on RocknRolla). I love how straight-talking he is and sometimes it's confrontational, but what he does say is on the money every time.

I am terrible for swearing.
There's always a lot of swearing on film sets and I'm so bad that my kids say 'Stop it Mummy!' They're always telling me off. I love hanging out with the boys on a set - it's almost more relaxing than hanging out with the girls.

I've experienced racism in Hollywood but not as conflict or in a threatening way, just the ignorance of people.
There was one time I went for a meeting for this big movie and I was up for a character who wasn't written as black. The character was a college graduate and the studio head, a woman, said, 'How can we make this role more black if we are going to have you in the film?' And I said, 'Well, I think as it's written it's fine...' And she said, 'Yeah, I know, but she is a graduate, she has been to university.' So I said, 'I've been to university.' And then it was, 'Yeah, but you're different.' I wasn't offended. It's just nonsense. But no, I didn't do the film.

'Guy Ritchie is an acquired taste': Thandie on her RocknRolla director
My attitude towards Hollywood can be summed up as 'smash and grab'.
I go into a meeting with a director as an equal, thinking that what I have to offer is of great value. It also makes me appreciate how much I have changed. Twenty years ago I wasn't so well-equipped to deal with Hollywood.

I thought Oliver Stone was crazy when he told me he wanted me to play Condoleezza Rice.
I remember preparing for the film (W) and the make-up artist saying, 'We're going for feel-alike rather than lookalike.' But I wanted to look like her. So I had false teeth and a completely different hairstyle. I hear she's joined my agency, William Morris, so maybe I'll run into her in the corridor - that would be funny.

I was shocked when two BNP candidates were elected to the European parliament.
We need an Obama in Britain. You want someone to rise up from somewhere and take everyone by surprise. I think the BNP picking up votes stems from disenchantment.

I was the only black girl and only non-Catholic at St Mary's Roman Catholic School in Penzance.Whenever they were all at prayers I had free time. I got into a lot of trouble - they made me sit on a baby chair. It was supposed to shame you, but it didn't break me. There was a footballing nun who used to play on the pitch with the boys. She'd even wear a wimple.

I hate it when Gordon Ramsay abuses people on TV.
Those people come from goodness knows where to be in the kitchen with him and he's swearing at them, shaming them, mocking them, abusing them, and they just take it. That's got nothing to do with being a chef.

'I thought Oliver Stone was crazy when he told me he wanted me to play Condoleezza Rice,' said Thandie of her role in the film W
I can't stand reality TV.
Apparently, some people even watch Big Brother when all of the contestants are asleep in the house. Can you believe that?

You go into newsagents now and the top shelf is all the way down to the bottom.
My kids are getting comics next to the cover of a men's mag with a girl who's topless. The boundaries have gone.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1223590/Thandie-Newton-Guy-Ritchie-racism-Hollywood-Oliver-Stone-crazy.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0VZx06vNT

Thandie and girls at the Times BFI Film Festival in London

They are so cuteeeee!

The Rainforest Foundation Photography Exhibition in London, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009.

Fashion Week Comes to a Star-Studded Close in NYC

2012 Stills

From the Independent

Of all the roles she’s had in the past 20 years there’s one Thandie Newton naturally prizes above all others: being a mother. She talks to Lucy Cavendish about family, the fame game and how she healed her past

When Thandie Newton walks into the Electric Bar in Notting Hill, west London, all heads turn to gaze. She is, after all, instantly recognisable. She has been in so many popular films — Mission: Impossible II, Norbit, The Pursuit of Happyness — and award-winning ones (Crash received an Oscar), as well as guesting in ER as Noah Wyle’s love interest. There can’t be a person in this fashionable bar who doesn’t know who she is. But the fact that everyone turns to look might also be down to the fact that, at 36, in a simple blue dress teamed with high wedges, she looks stunning. She has an amazing face — fine-boned, high-cheeked, a graceful smile — long, slim limbs and beautiful, dusky skin.

Just as I am musing on this, Newton greets me warmly, apologises sweetly for being late, then suddenly grabs my bags. “We must move,” she says forcefully. Then she marches down to the other end of the room.

She doesn’t like being recognised, she says, by way of explanation, although she understands why people approach her. “It’s called the fame game, isn’t it?” she says. “It’s a difficult one. In my day-to-day life I feel I am a wife and mother [she is married to the writer-director Ol Parker and they have two girls, Ripley, eight, and Nico, four]. I take the kids to school. I pick them up. We go to the park. I make food, that type of thing.”

Her children are now her priority, she tells me. She had them both naturally at home and, when she talks about them, her face lights up. “I cannot believe how much I love them,” she says. “I fed them both and carried them in me. When I see women who have plastic surgery done to their boobs I think, ‘How can you when they have fed your children?’”

So would she like to eschew all the glitz for full-time motherhood? “No,” she says, looking horrified. “I like escape, just as everyone else does.” Does she like the dressing up and presenting of gongs? She certainly does a lot of handing out of Baftas and Oscars and the like wearing a variety of gowns. “Love it,” she says fervently. “I love the dressing-up bit. I don’t shop much but, when I do, it’s great.” At the moment she is promoting the Martini Stay Beautiful campaign. “Well, it’s great, isn’t it?” she says. “I remember the advertisements as a child … Lots of beautiful people hanging out on yachts in St Tropez or wherever.”

She says that her daughters love to watch her getting ready. “They say ‘Mummy pretty’ and all that. Nico watched Norbit the other day on DVD. I don’t think she understood it but she spent the whole time stroking the screen and saying, ‘Mama?’.” Ripley — named after Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Alien films — already wants to act, she adds. “That’s how fame seems to children. They think it’s all glamour and glitz, but it’s really hard work.”

She should know. Newton has been acting ever since she was chosen to play the lead in the film Flirting when she was 16, 20 years ago. “It was a total fluke I got the job,” she says. “I was supposed to be a dancer.”

I tell her that a friend of mine taught her at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, where Newton trained. I remember my friend telling me that there was a girl there who, she thought, would go on to become a major actor. “She’s called Thandie Newton,” my friend said, “and she’s amazingly beautiful and talented.”

Newton laughs slightly nervously. “I wish I’d known that,” she says. “I could have done with hearing something like that. I didn’t have much confidence then.”

Most girls who went to Tring studied dance and, the way my friend described it, it was tough, with endless practice at the barre. “It’s true that life was hard,” says Newton. “I was 11 when I went there. We all put ourselves under enormous pressure because we all wanted to be successful dancers but, you know, it’s at a time when your body is changing. If you’re going to dance you have to be tiny but also fit and strong. I got injured. I couldn’t carry on. No one from my year at Tring made it.”

It was Flirting that changed Newton’s life, in more ways than one. For a start, it also starred Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. “That’s amazing, isn’t it?” says Newton. “I went to film in Australia and there they were. We’ve all gone on to do well but Nicole was already a star. People followed her everywhere when we were filming.”

But the film also marked the beginning of a relationship between Newton and the director, John Duigan, who was 39 at the time. It wasn’t a happy period. Newton looks away when I ask about Duigan. She has talked a lot in the past about how her six-year relationship with Duigan damaged her, saying how she felt she should have been more protected. In a past interview she said: “It was unhealthy. I was separated from my parents and very young, and I ended up having years of self-doubt. I think I should have been more protected. It’s a profession that attracts unconventional people who pride themselves on being unconventional, because that’s sometimes an asset to being an artist, right? But sometimes conventions are there for a reason and they are conventions because they work, because they are more healthy.”

Today she says, “I was 16. I didn’t tell my parents about it but really young people who are vulnerable have to be looked out for. I’ve just been out to South Africa to Oprah’s Leadership Academy [Oprah Winfrey is a long-time friend]. It educates girls from impoverished backgrounds and I was taking part in an arts week. I looked at the 16-year-old girls there. How can it possibly be right to start a serious relationship with someone at that age when you are so much older?” Was she dazzled by Duigan? She sighs. “I suppose so but … I’ve been through a lot of therapy so I sort of know why people do things now. I am aware of how complicated people’s lives are, so, while I don’t forgive him, I do understand a bit more. I have moved on and it feels as if it happened a long time ago.”

The relationship did leave her with scars — literally. She has talked in the past of being so unhappy that her eating patterns became messed up (not uncommon for someone training to be a dancer) and has always been very open about suffering from eating disorders. She has said that she still has scars on her hands from putting her fingers down her throat and the acid burning them with the reflux. I do find myself staring at her hands, but see nothing. “I think many young women have eating disorders, don’t they?” she says slightly defensively when I ask her about bulimia. “When you don’t like yourself or the situation you are in, you do not-very-nice things to yourself — I know why I did. I’ve talked about it a lot and now I wonder if I should have done.” In what way, I ask her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says vaguely. “I’m always asking myself, ‘Do people need to know about this?’ I know lots of women have suffered and do suffer from eating disorders, so talking about it and saying there is no shame in it is good. On the other hand, I feel I want to leave it behind now. I want to reclaim a bit of me.”

Yet the past keeps cropping up. She says, rather elliptically, that she thinks part of her problems in later life were the result of the circumstances of her childhood. She grew up in Penzance, Cornwall, with her Zimbabwean mother, Nyasha, a Shona princess who came to Britain to work as a nurse, her English father, Nick, a lab technician-turned-artist, and her brother, Jamie, who is now a television producer. Her relationship with her mother could, she tells me, be strained at times.

“I remember sensing that my mother was holding something back from me,” she says. “I used to think I had done something wrong because she could be so distant. I knew there was something going on that I didn’t know about and, because I was a child, I thought it was my fault. It took me years to work out that she had actually been protecting me as a child.” Protecting her from what? “Racism,” says Newton simply.

“It was Cornwall. I don’t blame people. I don’t think it was truly nasty, but there were comments, and my mother kept that all away from us and, to do that, she had to keep herself distant in order to be a barrier between us and them.” She says that she and her mother have talked it through.

‘She has explained it to me and of course I understand. There were times when I was so unhappy no one could reach me. It’s like a madness. But my mother and father have always supported me in what I do, even when I have had my own distance from them.” They were incredibly proud of her when she went to Cambridge to read anthropology. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to go,” she says. “My acting career was taking off but my parents were so excited and they wanted me to have a fall-back if everything went wrong. Also, my mother had a very rural upbringing. She walked for hours on end, backwards and forwards, just to get an education.”

Newton divided her Cambridge years between studying and dashing off to make films such as Jefferson in Paris and Interview with the Vampire. “I was sure I was going to flunk my finals,” she says. “I was in Cannes promoting a film and then dashing back to the hotel to revise.” She pulled it off, though.

“I got an upper second,” she says proudly. She says that she is very happy now. She spends a lot of her time campaigning for charities — as well as supporting Oprah’s Leadership Academy, she campaigns to highlight and help prevent the use of rape as a tool of war. “I’ve been to fundraisers to help women in the Congo,” she says. “Their stories are truly horrific.

“I used to go back to Zimbabwe all the time to see my relations,” she continues. “I don’t go now because of the political situation. Because I’m well known I don’t want anything I say or do to be misconstrued.” She would, however, love to take her children there. “I think Africa is an amazing continent. People there know what life is about. They are warm and kind and tactile. It’s like what Bono said to me: ‘Africa’s sexy.’ People forget that, but it is.”

She is also happy to take a back seat in her career so that her husband can work more. “We juggle it,” she says. “I’ve just finished making a blockbuster called 2012, and he is making a film now, so I am more at home.” She famously once turned down $6m to be in the film of Charlie’s Angels (Lucy Liu ended up taking the part). “I had been away for a year making Mission: Impossible II and I hadn’t seen Ol much and he wasn’t keen to travel. It’s our marriage, you know. It’s important.”

Interestingly enough, there are two Ol Parkers: the director who made An Ideal Husband and her Ol Parker. “The other one lives on our street,” she says. “We keep getting cheques for him through the post.” Does she cash them in? “Not big enough,” she says, laughing. Then she looks a bit worried. “I’m joking.”

Thandie Newton reveals her unique style

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:03a.m.
Thandie Newton used to dress like a fisherman.

The 36-year-old actress grew up in the coastal county of Cornwall, south west England, and took fashion inspiration from the people she saw working on fishing trawlers.

She explained: “My mum’s wardrobe was always full of great stuff, as my parents lived in Zambia in the 70s. Later, when we lived in Cornwall, there was this whole fisherman thing going on. I used to wear gorgeous African batik skirts with a fisherman’s smock – that was my look!

“I think that’s one of the lovely things about fashion – it’s not just what’s in, but an anthropology of where you’ve come from.”

However, Thandie’s mother Nyasha was not always so enamoured with her daughter’s style.
Thandie used to love riffling through charity shops as a youngster, but Nyasha wasn’t so keen.

Thandie explained to Britain’s InStyle magazine: “When I was growing up, my mom was so sad when I was looking for vintage stuff – she thought it was because we couldn’t afford new things, but I had an instinct that that’s where you’d find interesting clothes on a budget.”

Thandie Newton says no to surgery

'Crash' actress Thandie Newton has vowed she won't have cosmetic surgery on her breasts because she is a mother.
Thandie Newton will never have a boob job. The 'Crash' actress - who has two daughters, eight-year-old Ripley and Nico, four, with her husband, writer Ol Parker - won't have cosmetic surgery to enhance her breasts because she is a mother. She said: 'I cannot believe how much I love my children. I fed them both and carried them in me. When I see women who have plastic surgery done to their boobs I think, 'How can you when they have fed your children?' ' Thandie has also revealed she enjoys dressing up in designer gowns to attend awards ceremonies and glitzy events - and her kids love seeing their mother in glamorous outfits. The 36-year-old British beauty added to Britain's Stella magazine: 'I love it. I love the dressing up bit. I don't shop that much but, when I do, it's great. 'My daughters like watching me get ready. They say, 'Mummy pretty', and all that. 'That is how fame seems to children. They think it is all glamour and glitz, but it is really hard work.'

Thandie Newton's mother protected her from racism

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 1:28p.m.
Thandie Newton has credited her mother with shielding her from racism while she was growing up in England - although her efforts strained their relationship at times.

The actress is the daughter of Englishman Nick and Zimbabwean Nyasha, who emigrated to Britain to work as a nurse.

As a result of her mixed heritage, the Crash star and her family were subjected to cruel taunting during her youth in the English county of Cornwall.

But Newton admits she frequently wasn't aware of the rude remarks because her mother worked hard to protect her from it.

She says, "I remember sensing that my mother was holding something back from me. I used to think I had done something wrong because she could be so distant. I knew there was something going on that I didn't know about, and, because I was a child, I thought it was my fault. It took me years to work out that she had actually been protecting me as a child (from) racism.

"It was Cornwall. I don't blame people. I don't think it was truly nasty, but there were comments, and my mother kept all that away from us and, to do that, she had to keep herself distant in order to be a barrier between us and them."

The 36-year-old struggled to understand her mother's distance, insisting it left her feeling deeply devastated: "She has explained it to me and of course I understand. There were times when I was so unhappy no one could reach me. It's like a madness."

But their relationship has since been patched up - and she's grateful for her mother's support: "My mother and father have always supported me in what I do, even when I have had my own distance from them."

Thandie's secret

How Thandie Newton keeps her peepers wrinkle-free!

Her secret? Heal, an advanced healing gel from The Firm. Heal gel not only heals and softens scars and bruises, but it reduces swelling and inflammation, instantly soothing your skin.

Thandie Newton loves it so much she calls it an ‘elixir of life’ claiming that “a close-up after a 14-hour day is actually possible with Heal, it tightens the skin around my eyes immediatey".

This remarkable gel formula is the brainchild of a group of leading plastic surgeons and took three whole years to perfect.

It contains ten active ingredients that soothe, repair and reduce scarring, including arnica montana, a natural plant-based anti-inflammatory, healing peptides and signaline, which helps to regenerate the skin’s surface and boost collagen production.

Thandie Newton is not the only fan of Heal gel - Joely Richardson also can’t get enough of it saying, “I’ve come to love Heal. It’s like a protective layer that I wear daily now.”

Sounds like a medicine cabinet must

Thandie My London

Thandie Newton - My London
Sylvia Mulder, ES Magazine
07.08.09 Home is...
Northwest London. I have been living there for a long time now, I really enjoy it.

Where did you last go on holiday?
I went to the Borgo Santo Pietro hotel in Tuscany recently, which was beautiful. One of my favourite family holidays was spent at the Carlisle Bay hotel in Antigua. Everything was right on the beach, so my husband and I could watch our two daughters play while having delicious food. The Cuixmala in Mexico was also heaven on earth. The girls released baby turtles into the ocean which they loved.

Which London shops do you rely on?
The farmers' market in Queens Park is incredible. I get my food for the week there. I also love Little Davis in the East End for ecologically responsible children's clothes. Start, in EC2, has a beautiful range of clothes, from Stella McCartney to Chloé. Everything there is wonderfully tailored.

What advice would you give a tourist?
Come in the winter when it's a bit quieter and not completely packed with tourists, so you can see the real London. It's the best time to visit the city, because the lights are on and you can spend a cosy night in the pub.

What's the best meal you've had in London?
I love the River Café in Hammersmith; I try to go there at least a couple of times a month.

What's your earliest London memory?
When I was 12 I got a part in the Royal Festival Ballet's The Nutcracker as one of the children. My whole family came from Cornwall for three weeks and I was performing every night and all the matinées. It was a dream come true.

What would be on your tombstone?
It's a really sad idea, so I'd rather not think about it.

What are you most afraid of?
Bees becoming extinct. There are scientific theories, which I'm a believer in, that claim that four years after bees become extinct, humans will, too, because bees are the key to the human cycle.

What are your guilty pleasures?
Watching Curb Your Enthusiasm in bed with a box of Baker & Spice chocolate cookies.

What would you do as Mayor for the day?
Oh, that's a never-ending list, but one thing I'd definitely do is make everyone do charity work.

What animal would you most like to be?
My mutt Maggie, because she gets to spoon my eldest daughter [Ripley] every night.

What was the last album you downloaded?
The album of this upcoming singer called Speech Debelle. It's fantastically lyrical; I love it.

What would you save from a fire? Other than my loved ones, I'd save my BlackBerry. It's so useful, and if there's a fire in my house I guess I'd need to call some people!

What makes you laugh?
The comedian Danny McBride. He's wonderfully self-conscious.

What are you up to at the moment?
I have a film coming out soon, called 2012, which is directed by Roland Emmerich. And next week I'm going to South Africa to teach an acting workshop at Oprah's girls' school. She asked me herself, so I'm really honoured.

Where do you shop in London?
Church Street in Marylebone, because it's like an interiors Walhalla. I absolutely love Alfies Antique Market. My favourite stall is called Dodo and it sells antique posters - I have several.

What do you like to wear?
At the moment I love my Georgina Goodman nude leather gladiator flats.

What's your favourite London pub?
The Chamberlayne in Queens Park. When my husband and I take the dogs for a long walk we usually pop in there for a cider, and the dogs can come in as well.

What are your favourite London discoveries?
Jivamukti Yoga came to Kensal Road a few years ago from New York and it is just a temple of self-love and energy.

Have you ever stolen anything?
I've stolen small change from my daughter's money box for parking. I will replace it, though.

Thandie Newton is the new face of Martini Rosato 'Stay Beautiful'.

2012 Press Conference Los Angeles

2012