Georgie Henley: Meet the young Narnia star who's being hailed as the new Emma Watson ....................

Like Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame, Georgie Henley made her screen debut aged nine in a hugely successful children’s film – and has blossomed into a sassy, stylish young woman. As the latest Narnia adventure hits our screens, Georgie tells Jane Gordon about teen crushes, sibling rivalry and why, unlike Emma, she’ll never be a model

The list of things that 15-year-old Georgie Henley loves is both touchingly childlike and determinedly teenage. The girl who has grown up before our eyes playing Lucy Pevensie in the Narnia films (the third of which, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is released next month) loves, in no particular order, Robert Pattinson, The X Factor, Brandon Flowers, Topshop, her best friend Emma, her cat Ruby, her BlackBerry, her sisters Rachael and Laura, her mum and dad, The Inbetweeners, chocolate cake
and fajitas.

On one level Georgie is surprisingly mature, but on another she is admirably normal, with her feet (today in a pair of Asos ankle boots) firmly rooted in Ilkley, Yorkshire, where she lives, rather than the glamorous surroundings of London’s Dorchester Hotel, in which we meet. 

With her endearing combination of charm, intelligence and emergent beauty (she has stunning blue eyes, great bone structure and perfect skin), it is perhaps not surprising that she is being hailed as the new Emma Watson. Georgie herself, though, is so surprised by any comparison with the 20-year-old Harry Potter star (who also made her first film at nine and is now a major international style icon) that she bursts out laughing. 

‘I take that as a compliment because she is so smart, but I don’t think I could front a Burberry campaign or anything like that. I don’t think modelling is something I could do because I like food too much. I had an Asian platter for two the other day and I finished it all myself. It was so yummy,’ she says, settling down to give her first solo grown-up interview.

Much of the credit for the fact that Georgie is so unspoilt must go to her mother Helen (here today as her chaperone but discreetly absent from our interview) and her father Mike, a lawyer, who have ensured that their youngest daughter’s education (she attends the prestigious Bradford Grammar School) comes before her acting career and that the balance of the Henleys’ family life is not disturbed by her success. 

‘In a sword scene I forgot to duck and one of the handles hit me. I had to go to hospital with a black eye and massive swelling’

‘My mother treats me exactly the same as she has always done, and the same as my older sisters. She tells me off when I need it, and sometimes I do need telling to go to my room or to do my homework. Any mother-daughter relationship involves that, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. If my mum was in any way fazed by this then we wouldn’t have a real relationship,’ she says with a grin.

Georgie believes that being the youngest of three girls worked in her favour when she was spotted at her local drama group by a casting agent and chosen to portray Lucy in the film adaptations of C S Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. Lucy is the younger sibling
of Peter, Edmund and Susan, and is arguably the most important of the four Pevensie children, with a closer link to Aslan the lion and a stronger belief in the magical world of Narnia. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is regarded as Lucy’s book, and the two eldest siblings, Susan and Peter, are not involved (although they do, Georgie confides, make a guest appearance in the film). 

The plot involves Lucy, her brother Edmund (played by 19-year-old Skandar Keynes) and their cousin Eustace (17-year-old Will Poulter) entering the world of Narnia through a picture of a ship and meeting up again with Prince Caspian (29-year-old Ben Barnes). The film was shot in Australia over a five-month period, much of which was spent on or under water. And if being constantly wet wasn’t bad enough, Georgie also had to master sword fighting.

‘The worst thing happened in a sword scene in which I had to fight off four grown men. We had almost got it right on the first take but the camera missed an important bit where I kick one of the men in, er, a not-so-very-nice place, and they wanted me to do it again. So we did it, but then I forgot that I was supposed to duck and one of the men’s sword handles hit me. I had to go to accident and emergency – I had a black eye and massive swelling on one side of my face. We had to continue shooting the next day, so they applied tons of make-up and digitally reshaped my face!’ 

The actors playing the four main characters are, Georgie says, firm friends, but there was never any question of romance between her and Skandar (who is now studying at Cambridge University) or Will (who she believes will be the ‘next big thing’). Nor does Georgie think of Ben Barnes – who is emerging as a serious rival to heart-throb Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame – ‘in that way’.

‘I never really noticed that Ben was good looking. It was so surreal walking down the red carpet at the premiere of Prince Caspian and hearing girls shouting, ‘Ben, I love you’, and ‘Ben, marry me’. No one has shouted at me before, but now that I am a bit older maybe they will!’ she says, visibly brightening at the idea of red-carpet adulation.

Georgie is keeping quiet about what she will be wearing for the premiere of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but she has strong views on fashion (she has strong views on pretty much everything) and knows what she won’t be wearing. ‘I am definitely not into the exposed look. I am not one of those people who flashes their stomach or anything like that, because I don’t have the confidence. I have confidence in my personality, because I think that if I talk to people hopefully they will like me, but I don’t have confidence in my body. Besides, I like individuality in fashion – it annoys me when celebrities put on a bodycon dress and a pair of high heels and suddenly they are “style icons”,’ she says, instead citing Alexa Chung and Florence Welch as her fashion role models. 

For our interview today Georgie is wearing a Topshop floral top and a brown faux leather skirt, but most days she is to be found in the simple uniform of Bradford Grammar, the independent co-educational day school she attends when she is back in the real world (during filming she had three hours of tuition every day). She will take her GCSEs next summer and admits to being conscientious about schoolwork. ‘I work really hard, I really do. I am a bit of a geek – a geek with friends, if you know what I mean. I am not a loner but I do work hard and, although my future is a little ambiguous, I wouldn’t rule out going to university,’ she says.

Georgie acknowledges that she has come across a little jealousy at school, but never among her group of friends, which is made up of a ‘nice little set of girls’ and a wider group of boys who she feels comfortable with. Now and again during our interview she refers to boys as ‘fit’ or ‘cute’ and talks of her teenage crushes.

‘I did like Russell Brand, but he has gone for Katy Perry and I am not like her at all. And I have got a bit of a thing for Bill Nighy, who is really quite old. And I absolutely love Simon Cowell. Then, of course, Robert Pattinson – although I am a bit turned off because so many girls love him.’

Is there anyone special at school? Does she have a boyfriend?

‘Oh no, there is nothing like that. I am definitely viewed as the ugly duckling in my group. My girlfriends are all very attractive so nobody looks at me like that,’ she says with her customary self-deprecation.

Georgie’s earnings from her involvement in the Narnia films (her character is not in the fourth chronicle, The Silver Chair, but features again in the fifth and the seventh of the books) are unknown. Although her wealth is unlikely to be anywhere near Emma Watson’s estimated £22 million, her financial future is assured. So, has she developed any extravagant tastes? ‘I am careful with money. I am on an allowance and the only things I spend money on are going to the cinema, downloading music and the odd trip to Topshop in Leeds. What else am I going to spend money on? I have never touched drugs, I have never smoked and I don’t plan to. I do have a BlackBerry, but I only got it because I was due a phone upgrade and I negotiated a cheaper deal on it,’ she says (it’s switched off – she thinks it’s rude to text or take calls in front of people). 

Family life is hugely important to Georgie and she is very close to her sisters Rachael, 22 – who played the grown-up Lucy in the first film and has now graduated from drama school and is establishing her own career in the theatre – and Laura, 20, who is at university studying law. Did the youngest daughter’s success ever prompt any sibling rivalry? 

‘By the time I got to the age where I could actually appreciate that Laura and Rachael
could be slightly upset by the amount of attention I was getting, they were old enough not to care about it, so it doesn’t affect the family,’ she says. ‘Now I am the only one at home, my parents give me lots of attention, and when my sisters come home it’s all about them, what they say and their adventures.’ 

Outside Narnia and school, Georgie spends most of her free time with her best friend Emma (who goes to a different school), and Friday evenings are usually spent babysitting Emma’s little brothers, eating chocolate cake and watching DVDs. Her other hobbies include cooking (she took a course as part of her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award), playing with Ruby the ‘killer cat’ (who brings rabbits in through the cat flap) and making music in her room (she writes songs, plays the guitar and dreams of being in a band). 

Georgie has no idea what the future holds after A-levels (the next three years will be devoted to her studies), but for now she is happy to lead the life of a normal 15-year-old. Well, not quite normal, because one of the few downsides of her role in the Narnia films is that having a public profile makes it unwise for her to expose details of her life on Facebook or Twitter (although there are a number of fake Georgies on both).

‘I envy my friends because Facebook is fun and you get to see what’s happening in other people’s lives. Emma lets me use hers so I can sometimes stalk, but not in a creepy way! 

‘You know, maybe I’m lucky because five or six years from now, when we are all auditioning for jobs, employers will find all these pictures of them drunk, and there won’t be any of me!’