The White Lotus star biting back at Instagram face’

Aimee Lou Wood has instantly won viewers’ hearts with her happy-go-lucky charm. But it’s her refreshingly real face that makes the British actor a true role model, says Helen Coffey

- Helen Coffey

“I love your teeth."

”This line, directed at actor Aimee Lou Wood in the latest season of The White Lotus, was surely written specifically for her. It is, on the face of it, a throwaway comment. Yet it perhaps provides an insight into how Wood beat out thousands of other performers to be cast as Chelsea, a Mancunian yoga teacherturned-companion to Walton Goggins’s bad-tempered older man, Rick.

Competition to be part of the hand-picked ensemble in Mike White’s critically acclaimed eat-the-rich drama set at a luxury holiday resort is fierce; the previous two seasons have seen newcomers thrust into the spotlight alongside Hollywood heavyweights. Becoming a member of this exclusive club practically guarantees that your career is about to get supercharged (see Leo Woodall and Meghann Fahy).

For Wood, though she’d already been well-received for her role in Netflix’s four series of Sex Education, her turn in White Lotus is likely to launch her into the stratosphere. And, in a world that’s increasingly packed with identikit faces and impossible-toachieve beauty standards, I couldn’t be happier.

Wood looks, for want of a better word, real. Like the kind of girl you might see on the treadmill at the gym, or waiting for the kettle to boil in the office kitchen, or standing next to you on the train platform while bopping along to the latest Sabrina Carpenter track. She’s slim and pretty, sure, but her face is at once striking and authentic.

This White Lotus teeth compliment is telling because they really are the first thing you’re likely to notice about her. They’re buck teeth, or what might be more affectionately referred to as “bunny teeth”, the top ones prominent and pushing forward over the lowers. The kind of teeth you never, ever see in Hollywood (or, let’s face it, on