Alice Englert

Creativity runs in Alice Englert’s family: the 17-year-old Australian actress’s father, Colin Englert, is a producer and director, and her mother, Jane Campion, is the Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker behind The Piano (1993) and Bright Star (2009). Nevertheless, Englert herself didn’t immediately know that she wanted to go into the family business, dabbling in music, writing, and theater as she spent her childhood shuffling between her hometown of Sydney and the myriad points around the globe that her mother’s work took them —including New Zealand, where Campion was born and raised. “I’ve spent half my life on planes,” Englert says. “I have a lot of love for New Zealand, though. That is where the really arty, whimsical side of the family resided—in hobbitland.” But since leaving high school last year to focus her attention, at least professionally, on acting—she still writes and brings a guitar with her wherever she travels— Englert has managed to secure roles in a trio of high-profile films: Roland Joffe’s 18th-century epic Singularity; Lena Duchannes’s Southern Gothic Beautiful Creatures; and Sally Potter’s Cold War period piece Bomb, in which she plays one of the two female leads along with Elle Fanning. Set in the mid-1960s, Bomb is a coming-of-age story that centers around the bond that develops between two teenage girls who become swept up in the sexual revolution and the antinuclear protests of the era—a relationship that is tested when one girl embarks on an affair with the other’s father. “They are both 16 and have noticed that men have started to notice them,” says Englert, who shot the film in London earlier this year. “They’re at that stage when you’re a young girl and attractive and there is such satisfaction with feeling like you are adored. It’s amazing, when you’re that age, to try to get a reaction out of people.” She adds: “And then, everything goes pear-shaped.”

PHOTO: ALICE ENGLERT IN LONDON, JANUARY 2012. JACKET: DIESEL. COSMETICS: NARS COSMETICS, INCLUDING LARGER THAN LIFE LONG-WEAR EYEWEAR IN MADISON AVE. HAIR PRODUCTS: BUMBLE AND BUMBLE,INCLUDING SURF SPRAY AND THICKENING SPRAY. STYLING: ZOE JAMES. HAIR: FEDERICO GHEZZI FOR BUMBLE AND BUMBLE/CLM. MAKEUP: SALLY BRANKA FOR NARS COSMETICS/JULIAN WATSON AGENCY. PRODUCTION: LALALAND. PHOTO ASSISTANT: EDDIE BLAGBROUGH. SPECIAL THANKS: SPRING STUDIOS.