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FASHION-FORWARD SIMONE ASHLEY REVS UP FOR A ROLE IN BRAD PITT'S SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER F1

- REBECCA FORD

SIMONE ASHLEY'S PARENTS supported her dream of being an actor when she was a teenager, but a few years later, they seemed to be watching the clock. "When I was in my early 20s, they were still open to it," the actor says on a video call from her home in London. "But I think, secretly, they were like, 'Oh, when you hit 25, that's when you have to get serious.' I didn't really explain how much I wanted it-and how hard I was working for it-because I wanted the work to prove that I could do it. Then when I, thankfully, could make a living off doing this, I think they were just like, 'Cool, she's fine."

Fine doesn't do justice to Ashley's trajectory. By the time she was 25, she had a steady gig as a popular bubble-gum-popping high schooler in Sex Education, with Gillian Anderson. By 26 she'd broken out on the second season of Bridgerton as Kate Sharma, an independent young woman who'd rather race through the countryside on her horse than promenade around a ballroom waiting for a gentleman to ask her to dance.

Now Ashley has scored a plum role in F1, Brad Pitt's Formula One racing film, which roars into theaters in June. "I'm really out to show such a range of things I can do," she says. "Being dark-skinned, being a culturally specific woman in Hollywood, it's about finding the right kind of project where you just see the humanity in someone." Along the way, she has added all manner of things to her résumé. She's appeared in a Nespresso commercial with George Clooney and become a L'Oréal Paris brand ambassador as well as a fashion It girl, who wore a sequined midnight blue Prabal Gurung gown-and purple eye shadow that evoked a young Cher-to the Met Gala last year.