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    Bel Powley avoided period pieces, but 'A Small Light' was no 'dusty historical drama'

    Bel Powley isn't one of those English actors who is forever starring in period pieces and stuffy literary adaptations. Despite features that practically scream "Brontë heroine" — pale skin, sorrowful blue eyes, dark hair — the 31-year-old has earned a reputation for playing opinionated, fast-talking young women figuring out their path in the world — characters brimming with wit and frantic ...
    by Meredith Blake, Los Angeles Times May 24, 2023 6 minutes
    Powley stars in“ A Small Light” as Miep Gies, one of the people who helped eight Jews, including Anne Frank, hide in a secret annex in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

    Bel Powley isn't one of those English actors who is forever starring in period pieces and stuffy literary adaptations.

    Despite features that practically scream "Brontë heroine" — pale skin, sorrowful blue eyes, dark hair — the 31-year-old has earned a reputation for playing opinionated, fast-talking young women figuring out their path in the world — characters brimming with wit and frantic energy who feel instantly familiar to a modern viewer.

    There was Minnie, the hormonally supercharged 15-year-old she played in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"; Claire, a sexually assertive production assistant in "The Morning Show"; Kelsey, Pete Davidson's spray-tanned friend with benefits in "The King of Staten Island"; and Birdy, a garrulous twentysomething Londoner in "Everything I Know About Love."

    "I've always really shied away from period stuff. I often find myself feeling really distanced from it," she said between gulps of iced coffee on a recent morning in Manhattan, still adjusting to the time change after arriving from London a day earlier.

    Her resistance to historical material was challenged

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