You star Tilly Keeper celebrated her birthday this year with a fun-filled trip to sunny Ibiza, Spain. Keeper, who plays Phoebe on the show, shared pictures from her celebratory trip, including ones of her enjoying food and drinks while wearing a variety of bikinis. “Took a brief hiatus from my binge-watch of Vanderpump Rules to go to Ibiza for my bday,” she captioned the post. Here’s how Keeper stays fit, and how she feels about playing Phoebe.
Keeper focuses on staying active over spending hours at the gym. “I used to dance, but now I just do whatever I can whenever I feel like it,” she says. “I might run around the house, run around the park or do a few star jumps. I’m not rigorous with it – I don’t do it very often at all! I like to avoid fatty or sugary foods, but it’s not a priority –I cheat every day! My mum is really slim, so thank goodness that I inherited those genes.”
Keeper has a few beauty essentials she can’t live without. “Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Éclat highlighter, because it makes me look more awake in the morning,” she says. “I also love my eyelash curlers. I curl them every morning – even if I’m up at 6am! A good red lipstick. My favorite is Chanel Rouge Coco because the color is flattering on my skin tone. It’s important to use make-up to highlight your beauty, rather than try to create something that’s not there. I have done it in the past and it looks terrible.”
Keeper loves the complexity of her You character. “On first look, Phoebe comes across as vapid, a bit of an airhead, materialistic, superficial… and she can be all those things,” she says. “But the real core of this character is goodness, light and naivety. She has a lot of love to give – and she doesn’t have a lot of love in her life, and I think that makes her quite a lonely individual. But it doesn’t necessarily make her a jaded person. And I think that’s really nice – she’s very optimistic, despite the tone of the whole show.”
Keeper describes her style as very edgy and rock and roll. “I own a lot of leather jackets,” she says. “I like the idea that it looks as if I’ve just rolled out of bed and put my outfit on, when actually I’ve very meticulously planned what I’m going to wear!”
Keeper started her career on the iconic British soap EastEnders. “It was my drama school!” she says. “I was there from 18 till 21 or 22 and I learned how to work with multiple directors. Not just over the years but over weeks because you have such a wide range of episodes to work across. It just taught me so many skills. It’s a skill set that you can only learn by being on the kind of set where everything’s fast paced and a huge ensemble. It was like a bootcamp – a really great learning experience and set me up so well.”