Known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, this British actor hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him.
“I’ve often found that the way people see me is very different from how I see myself,” Nicholas Galitzine said. “People attribute a pristineness to me.”
This was on a recent morning in a rococo hotel room, just west of Madison Square Park. (How rococo? Imagine Fragonard macrodosing on psilocybin.) Galitzine, who recently relocated from London to Los Angeles, was in New York for a few days to promote “Mary & George,” a steamy historical drama in which he stars as George Villiers, the ambitious lover of King James I. It premieres Friday on Starz. Next month, he will also appear as Hayes, a boy-band sensation in an age-gap romance, in the giddy Amazon rom-com “The Idea of You.”
Boyishly handsome, with lips like plumped throw pillows and a jawline that is frankly ridiculous, Galitzine, 29, is often cast as princes (“Cinderella,” “Red, White & Royal Blue”), straight and gay, or as modern-day prince equivalents — a pop phenom, a football star. That’s how Hollywood has seen him: patrician, elegant.
“Refined, maybe, is a word,” he said. (That upmarket English accent? It helps.) But refined is not an adjective he applies. He described himself instead as “chaotic,” as “messy,” which princes aren’t always allowed to be.
“That’s a tricky thing sometimes, playing princes and people expecting that,” he said. “The reality is very different.”
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
