Maisie Williams has "never felt better" since she moved to the country.
The 25-year-old actress was catapulted to global fame playing Arya Stark in HBO fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones’ – which was adapted from George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' books - set up home in 2021 in a 1930s cottage in West Sussex, England, with her fashion designer boyfriend Reuben Selby.
Maisie - who made her acting debut in 2011 at 12 years old in 'Game of Thrones' - has found peace away from the city, the red carpet and the craziness of her career and she has never felt happier amidst the greenery of the countryside.
In an interview with NET-A-PORTER’s digital title PORTER, she said: "I have just never felt better. What I’ve learned about myself is that I gain a lot more when I am alone, and it’s much harder to do that when you’re out on the scene.
“It’s hard to really let go and there is a tendency to give into pressures while living in that world.”
Maisie and Reuben do get a few glances when they go out in their village, but she thinks that's more because they "look weird" rather than for her 'Game of Thrones' fame.
She added: "It’s hard to know what people are looking at though. Sometimes we will be in a shop and we’re like, ‘Are people looking at us because they recognize us or is it because we look weird?’”
The ‘Doctor Who’ actress - who was born in Bristol and raised in Somerset - has also now learned to accept she is a quirky looking person after spending the "longest time" trying to look more traditionally beautiful.
She explained: "For the longest time, I was battling with wanting to look traditionally like what people picture as beautiful and I was getting really lost in that.
"Then, I cut my hair into a mullet and said, ‘Well, I’m not going to even try anymore and I’m just gonna do something which I think really suits me and is still very different to everything I’ve been doing but feels right. I was never getting the ‘Oh my gosh, she looks so beautiful’ [comments] before, but certainly afterwards I was getting ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’”
Maisie - who will soon be seen in Disney+ Sex Pistols series 'Pistol' as Pamela ‘Jordan’ Rooke - insists that since 'Game of Thrones' ended in 2019 she has been determined to try out roles which are far away from that genre.
She said: "Arya was written as hot-headed and I catch myself in roles jumping straight to being accusatory or angry or upset,
“I’ve felt myself kind of melting away from that, because that isn’t the reality of a lot of people.
“But it was Arya’s reality, and maybe mine, so I do find myself jumping there as if it were my place of comfort. I’d love to leave the crying and screaming for a while."
