Lily Collins stars as Emily Cooper in Netflix’s hit series Emily in Paris — a young women who is trying to navigate her love life and job while living in the City of Light.
While Emily isn’t the most fluent in French — she is trying by taking lessons — it turns out that the actress actually has dual citizenship!
These days, the brunette beauty, 32 — whose parents are British rockstar Phil Collins and American actress Jill Tavelman — has an American accent, but since she grew up in Guildford, United Kingdom, until she was 6 years old, she spoke differently until she moved to the United States.
“I was the new girl with a very sweet, strong but specific British accent. I was trying to say the names of my classmates but I just pronounced vowels in a very different way and so I got made fun of,” she recalled. “I quickly realized I wanted to fit in. Now, years later, you’re going, ‘Oh God, I wish I still had that accent.'”
Despite no longer living on the other side of the pond — her dad still has homes in Europe — she feels comfortable when she jets over to England.
“I am British. I mean, I’m both, but I associate more with being British. When I play roles with British accents, there’s something about it that feels like I’m speaking naturally, even though I’m having to put it on. Whenever I land here, I feel like I’m coming home. Especially after not being able to for years. Just even hearing the accent when we boarded the plane [yesterday], there’s just such a comfort in it,” she revealed.
Collins also revealed that she can speak French in real life, which was interesting for her to fake it while in character. “It’s very weird. I grew up speaking French in school, and my little brothers are half-Swiss, so I started speaking French with them at a young age, and I started dreaming in it and reading it,” she said. “And then I stopped practicing and then my confidence went down, and my little brother’s English was far better than my French, so I kind of started to give up. Then, when I went back for Emily, I was like, ‘OK, I am going to make it my mission to speak French fully, and then Emily is so bad at French and I am playing a character who is the most American I think I have ever felt in my entire life, it was very difficult to decipher between the two. So, my French I think got worse. I am going to start practicing it.”
What can’t this girl do?!
