She has talked about the time a film producer – recently revealed to be the disgraced Harvey Weinstein – on the set of Brideshead Revisited told her to lose weight, and that she looked like a “fat pig” on screen. They said I should speak up and out.” When one Twitter user asked, “Why are you so beautiful?” about Atwell’s appearance on the cover of a German TV magazine, she replied, “Why am I so Photoshopped?” “My parents would never say, ‘You’re so pretty.’ They’d say I was smart and strong, and had something to say.

It seems to have given her a ton of confidence, and a strong sense of responsibility, both to herself and to others. She spent summers in the US with her American father, a photographer and Californian shamanic guru, and has described a bohemian, New Age-y childhood (hot coals were walked across, and feelings talked about).

Photograph: BBCĪtwell grew up in west London with her mother, a motivational speaker. The advice she was given was: “Please don’t watch what I did. We discussed the book a lot.” Atwell, however, revealed this week that she had talked to Thompson, who became a friend after they worked together on Brideshead Revisited and The Duchess, about the role. If she was remotely daunted by the looming shadow of the film version, and Thompson’s Oscar-winning take, Macdonald didn’t see it. And I can’t tell you what a huge difference that makes.” As the leading actress, she set the tone for every single person on the set, just by arriving on time, ready to go, loving it. “The thing I didn’t know and was pleased by was her integrity about how she approaches a role, the amount of work she did, she was full of ideas, she had a lot to say and had a tremendous passion and enthusiasm for it. There were other things, beyond acting ability, that Atwell brought to the drama, says Macdonald. Margaret is always criticising herself, self-doubting, and interestingly is quite horrible at times, and it just seemed that Hayley could do all those things at the same time.” We needed someone who this energy and great passion, but who also had the ability to constantly reflect on that. And on the flipside, she can really access a vulnerability and clarity of emotional thought, because Margaret does go on quite a big emotional journey. “I think she has many qualities of Margaret – she has wit, a real interest in the world, an appetite for life, a curiosity, brains. “We thought she was the right person,” she says. The director, Hettie Macdonald, had remembered Atwell from her first big TV role in The Line of Beauty, the 2006 BBC adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel, and had seen her on stage.

Photograph: Laurie Sparham/BBC/Playground Television UK Limited 2017/Laurie Sparham Independent … Hayley Atwell with Tracey Ullman, left, and Alex Lawther in Howards End.

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