Face It

ELIZABETH DEBICKI is the MAX MARA Face of the Future we could see coming from miles away

- Eric Wilson

On an unseasonably warm February day in Milan, Elizabeth Debicki is sitting before a photographer. She plants her feet in a wide-open balletic pose that recalls her early training as a dancer. Sitting before a journalist the following day, she crosses her long legs in a closed-off double twist that suggests she might have once been a contortionist too.

“If I were a psychoanalyst, I might say I’m protecting myself,” Debicki says. “I’m very long. I guess I’ve just always been very languid,” she says with a laugh.

As much as the 28-year-old actress has become known for valuing her privacy (she avoids social media altogether), Debicki is also recognized for demonstrating remarkable physical fluidity in a string of standout performances. It is almost impossible to take your eyes off her as she glides across the screen portraying the confident but conflicted femmes fatales in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Night Manager or the downtrodden underdog– turned–glamorous criminal Alice in Steve McQueen’s Widows. In person it is the same. She sits through interviews with her head tilted slightly downward, signaling attentiveness or, perhaps, wariness. Yet it’s impressive that despite her height (Debicki is about 6' 3"), she invariably appears to be looking up.