Skins Star Lily Loveless was feeling philosophical while spending time in nature over the summer. Loveless, who played Naomi on the show, shared a picture of herself wearing a black bikini, holding up a paddle. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self,” she captioned the post, tagging the location as “peace”. Here’s how Loveless feels about her time on Skins and the advice she would give young actors today.
Loveless has sometimes felt boxed in by the roles she was offered after Skins. “I’m not sure if Naomi typecast me,” she says. “I know I wouldn’t have had particular roles offered to me if I hadn’t done Skins, so I didn’t accept those ones. I wanted to wait and hold out for ones that were different. But to be fair, being a teenage girl/young woman gets you typecast. There are a few good roles here and there, but mostly they just want a moody teenager with an attitude, or an airhead.”
Loveless had dreams of directing TV shows before she became an actress. “What I actually wanted to do as a kid was direct live TV – Top of the Pops or Blue Peter preferably,” she says. “I thought it would be the most fun job in the world. What made me want to act, what made me see how awesome film is, was a Film 4 trailer – a montage of different films, cut together with some fast, pumping track over the top. Film suddenly looked so crazy and exciting and I wanted to be a part of it. Those two minutes made a huge impact on me. Maybe I’m meant to be an editor!”
Loveless champions many humanitarian causes via her social media. “People who were in better physical and mental health were more likely to volunteer,” says Vanderbilt University sociologist Peggy Thoits. “And conversely, volunteer work was good for both mental and physical health. People of all ages who volunteered were happier and experienced better physical health and less depression.”
Loveless did theater for a rewarding challenge. “I find [with] acting I’m just more comfortable at it, so I wanted to go into theater as well because it’s completely different, it’s so challenging and so hard,” she says. “But the rewards are completely different and great as well. All I’m interested in is the characters and the writing. So, whether that’s in a play or a tv show or film, all that really matters to me is that the writing is good and that the character is a good character.”
Loveless wishes she could have given herself advice when she was starting out. “I’d tell myself to try as hard as I could at every take on every scene,” she says. “Never be lazy. To try, hard as it might be, to concentrate on the acting, and not worry about your appearance. I’d tell myself to listen to some, ignore many. You’ll know who. To be grateful. To not take “no” personally. To always be yourself, corny as that sounds. There’s a lot of pressure to look and act like everyone else. Your music taste is fine. You don’t have to like indie to be cool. You can stop pretending. You don’t have to be posh to fit in. You’ll find your space, and like-minded people.”