An Exclusive First Look At Ellie Bamber As Kate Moss In The Upcoming Noughties-Set Supermodel Biopic

Sean Gleason

Moss & Freud, a Kate Moss biopic centred around her relationship with the late Lucian Freud, is on its way. Here’s everything we know so far about the new film.

The official first look features a coveted piece of fashion history

Ellie Bamber as Kate Moss in Moss & Freud.

Kate Moss walks the runway in Paris for John Galliano’s spring 1993 collection.

Condé Nast Archives

The very first still from Moss & Freud, released exclusively by British Vogue on 22 January, shows Ellie Bamber in the part of the era-defining supermodel, posing on a ladder while wearing a giant ruffled skirt paired with a Union Jack-printed jacket which fashion aficionados will recognise instantly. Moss first sported the iconic piece back in 1993, on the Paris runway for John Galliano’s spring collection, rewearing it again more recently for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. Best of all, the item you’ll see on screen is the original, from Moss’s own archive, rather than a recreation. Keep your eyes peeled for more early images – as well as more eye-popping fashion Easter eggs – over the next few weeks and months.

Kate Moss at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022.

Samir Hussein

It’s the role of a lifetime for Ellie Bamber

British actor Ellie Bamber will, of course, appear as Moss in the movie, while Emmy winner Derek Jacobi will take a turn as Freud. Bamber is due to embody the model throughout the Noughties, a decade in which she dated Jefferson Hack, welcomed her daughter Lila and entered her 30s in fabulous, frenetic fashion. The first pap shots from the Moss & Freud set showed Ellie wearing the original navy sequined gown Kate slipped into for her The Beautiful and the Damned-themed 30th at Claridge’s (the look originally belonged to Bond girl Britt Ekland, who bought it for the 1974 premiere of The Man with the Golden Gun).

Ellie Bamber as Kate Moss, dressed for her 30th birthday party.

Splash News/Getty Images

Moss & Freud is set during an intense period of Moss’s life

Freud painted Moss over the course of nine months during her pregnancy with daughter Lila. “He taught me discipline, because I could not be late,” Moss recalled during a 2014 interview with ShowStudio’s Nick Knight, with their sessions lasting from 7pm to 2am, three nights a week. “If I was five minutes late, he would kick off. But only once I was five minutes late, and he said, ‘Are you on drugs?!’ And I said, ‘No, I’m pregnant!’”

Famously, Freud first approached Moss after she mentioned in a conversation with i-D that one of her ambitions in life included being the subject of one of his portraits – in spite of the fact that he rarely painted celebrities. Their relationship would prove transformational for them both, with the completed painting fetching £3.5 million during a Christie’s auction in 2005.

Fortunately, Moss has her own artwork to remember the sitting by: a pair of birds that Freud tattooed onto her lower back. “I mean, it’s an original Freud,” Moss later told Vanity Fair, adding that the artist used to tattoo his fellow sailors in the navy. “I wonder how much a collector would pay for that? A few million? If it all goes horribly wrong I could get a skin graft and sell it! It’s probably the only one on skin that’s still around.”

Freud is just one of many artists to take Moss as a muse. Allen Jones made a cast of the ’90s icon using resin and steel (in addition to photographing her for the much-dissected 2013 image, Body Armour), while Marc Quinn made a number of sculptures of her in a contorted yoga position. One of the latter now functions as a hat rack in Moss’s home in the Cotswolds.

It’s being penned by an Oscar winner

Screenwriter James Lucas brought home an Academy Award for his 2013 short with Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, and started writing Moss & Freud while “in Lucian’s studio, the scent of his oil paint still lingering in the air”. As an executive producer, Moss is also heavily involved in the development of the project, as is the Lucian Freud Archive. “After watching ‘The Phone Call’ I knew that James would convey the emotion in the storytelling in a fitting way, one this memoir deserves,” she wrote in a statement. “Having been involved in the project and script development from the beginning I am now very excited to see the film come to life.”