At Home With The Actor, Influencer And Designer Philippa Islington-Smythe

In her exclusive interview in today's Daily Telegraph Magazine, the actor, influencer and designer Philippa Islington-Smythe (above) discusses the price of fame, her controversial new perfume, working with Margot Robbie and how becoming a parent changed her perspective on the world.

"You are right: the end of the 1990s was a strange period for me," says Islington-Smythe. "Britpop was over, I was feeling enormously directionless and I found myself spending a lot of time with the actor Bob Hoskins, who I’d met several years earlier during auditions for the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Bob was kind to me at a singularly lost and lonely juncture in my journey through the universe, when a lot of people weren’t. But then I discovered hot Bikram yoga, my faith and the 97% cheese diet that I maintain to this day, and everything changed forever.”

“Have I been an angry person at times in my life? Let’s be honest: Who hasn’t? If you’d crossed me at the peak of my tabloid notoriety, you soon would have known about it. I will hold my hands up and say I was mean to some people. Jennifer Aniston did not call me ‘that tiny scuttling slag with the ears’ for nothing and, although it’s taken decades for me to come to terms with my part in it, I can now finally say I feel genuine remorse about the incident backstage at Glastonbury 1999 which hospitalised Sir David Attenborough. Thankfully I have mellowed a lot since then. It’s a fact of life: you grow up and find ways to alchemise your negative trigger points into positivity. Otherwise you are ultimately just fighting with yourself.”

"Why am I here? I ask myself that every day. I'm not sure I know, but I feel it's best that while I am, I put as much love out into the world I can, whether that be via my acting skills, my pheasant feather mini rucksacks, new ranges of personalised stationery, or just being a generally good person."

"Did I feel exposed by some of the things Jude wrote in his weekly newspaper column about our relationship? Without doubt. We bickered about it dreadfully at the time. Of course, that came to all seem very silly and meaningless when he fell ill, and seems even more so now he’s gone, bless his soul. If my relationship with Jude taught me anything, it is that staying in the now is the most important thing in life.”

"My yoga strengthens my mind in precise correlation with the way it strengthens my body. It is absolute, overwhelming. Each day I practice it I feel more capable of spreading my wisdom to those less fortunate than me and designing better rucksacks for every social rank of civilian to enjoy."

“It horrifies me now to think that, for a moment, at the agency, when I first saw his face, I almost changed my mind about adopting Result. He has become my whole planet and, as he approaches his university gap year, a shining example of what every young man should aim to be. I would quite literally immolate myself on a busy city street if it meant securing a better future for him.”

“The houses have been greatly exaggerated. There are three, not seven, as has been claimed in some sections of the media. And one is really awfully small. You’d probably never imagine I was living there if you were passing. There’s the sweetest little farm across the road where I purchase organic milk and vegetables. It’s really just a place a long way from anywhere that I can go and be totally in my head.”

"You mightn’t expect it, but I’m not a great one for ceremony, or awards. To be perfectly honest, when I am gone I'm not even sure I want a headstone, let alone a statue. How would I like to be remembered? I can’t give a precise answer to that question. But I can’t help thinking of an old Japanese saying I once heard which is applied to only the wisest and most venerated women in the continent of Japan, and actually also sometimes to those in neighbouring Africa. I won’t try to say it, as my Japanese is yet to reach the advanced level that I trust it one day will, but what it translates roughly to is she made a difference and did her not hide her abundant gifts away stingily.”

Meet Philippa in real life. And in a book.