Elizabeth Debicki’s year of reflections upon Home.

Fresh from her Critics Choice Award-winning role as Princess Diana in the final series of The Crown, Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki wears Matthieu Blazy’s bold, bright, globetrotting and crafts-infused collection for Bottega Veneta this spring.

Elizabeth Debicki wears Bottega Veneta throughout.

Where do you call home right now in your life?

London is home for the meantime – I made a more permanent move here in 2018. Before that I had spent many years finding myself in London to work on films or in theatre, so I’d end up spending up to six months of the year here and then the other months scattered around the globe. I realised London was my home the first time landing at Heathrow felt like I had landed somewhere totally and utterly familiar, and that comforted me deeply. Even the bad airport coffee and drive to my flat made me feel nestled in something that spoke of home. I had loved ones close, and the city was starting to make sense to me. So I moved here.

Which room do you spend most time in?

Honestly, my bedroom. I try to prioritise sleep (sometimes that is a total lost cause with strange shooting schedules) but my bedroom is very soothing to me. There is plenty of room to roll out my yoga mat. I often nestle up on a chair in there to read scripts, to get away from people; I might take my coffee back into bed if I have the day off. So it sees the most of me of all the rooms.

Where was home for you as a child?

The first few years of my life were spent in 18th in Paris. Then we moved when I was nearly six to the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Absolutely worlds apart in terms of the childhoods they offered me. My Australian childhood was a sunny safe place. My best friend lived a five-minute walk away. We walked to school together every morning. There was a milk bar for lollies and and a chicken shop for hot chips and a big green park at the end of our street where kids played AFL football all Saturday.

Can you describe the first place you lived when you moved away from the home where you grew up?

My first real move, when I left and didn’t really come back home, was to shoot my first film, The Great Gatsby. I had just finished acting school and while I had been in university I lived partly out of home, partly in cold share houses, partly with a boyfriend. So my big grown-up move was to work on that film. I had just turned 21. I lived in an apartment in Surrey Hills, Sydney. It was a very bare little flat, but I thought it was perfect. It was part of a complex, with a brick balcony and a little plain kitchen. I bought a huge casserole dish from a charity shop the second day I was there because I had grand plans of being a grown-up and slow-cooking. Of course, all I did was work and party and subsist on takeaways and the very, very good coffees I could find from the many excellent Sydney cafés on my street.

Can you remember the first time you felt homesick?

I think I’ve been homesick my whole life, although now I call it wanderlust. I wonder if that happens to children who leave their first home at an age where they have memories of a place that suddenly becomes so far away. Kids are resilient but they miss things. So I was probably very young when I first felt that pang. Now that I have lived in so many places for work, I am constantly missing somewhere else. It’s chronic. I’ll miss the bagels from the place around the corner where my partner used to live in Brooklyn. I’ll miss the sounds of the birds in Australian gardens, etc.

Are you any good at DIY?

I’m OK-ish. Small furniture I can assemble. Small little painting/repair projects I can undertake. I know some women who can re-sand and varnish their own floors etc. I am not she. But I am quite a good sewer. The last project was some curtains for my flat. My sister and I hand sewed them out of some linen. Like little café curtain sized. We are quite proud of them.

What’s on your bedside table?

Christmas gift books. The Real Review. Some old New Yorkers. A little dish full of jewellery and a broken beaded bracelet I may never fix. Some earplugs, because we have had lots of lovely people coming and going through the holidays.

What’s the furthest you’ve ever travelled from home?

Well, if my longest lived-in home is Australia, probably out on an icebreaker in the middle of the Baltic Sea shooting Tenet.

Do you have a special place you go to to escape from the world?

New Mexico. I adore the desert. The horizons in that land are unlike any other.

What most strongly triggers a sense of being home for you?

When I can gather up a handful of loved ones and sit them all at my table with a meal, then I feel like I’m home. Everyone eating, everyone peaceful.

If you are constantly travelling, what does it take to make you feel at home?

Scents (certain things to burn or light), framed photos I take with me, my own pillow cases; the sound of a familiar album helps. Just creating a little nest wherever you go.

Is your home a source of creativity and self-expression?

It is because it is peaceful. I know now that I need to be able to recharge the creative battery properly (or as best I can manage) in order to work. My home in London feels like the place I can exhale. And breathing is the first step I suppose to starting to make something again.

How does the physical environment of your home influence your emotional well-being?

I constantly discard things and make space. When you travel as much as I do you collect a lot but you also come home with new visions and new ideas for how to make your space work best for you. But I definitely subscribe to a ‘less is more’ practice. The less to put away, the happier my brain!