Lily James: I make mistakes ‘all the time’

Lily James makes mistakes “all the time”.

The ‘Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again’ star – who recently took a trip with Dominic West to Italy – believes she can “recover” from mistakes and learn from them as long as she makes them with an “open heart”.

She shared: “I think I make mistakes all the time. That’s what life is all about. I would never want to run away from a situation or be too scared to act. I think that it’s better to throw yourself in and make mistakes with an open heart. If your instincts are right even if they’re misguided, or if you’re open, you know, you can recover from your mistakes and learn from them.”

And the 31-year-old actress thinks constructive criticism is “useful”, as she admits she is “still learning and still figuring it out” and trying to “develop a thicker skin”.

Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar magazine, she added: “I think criticism can be useful if it’s constructive. At times, it can feel really personal and it can feel like a vendetta and an attack against you, and that’s really difficult.

“But I’m still learning, I’m still figuring it out, but I still think I can grow and I can develop a thicker skin – because all that really matters is how you feel about yourself and how the people you love feel about you. You can arm yourself with that power and that knowledge.”

Meanwhile, Lily previously confessed she still feels “like a child”.

She said: “Lockdown forces you to confront things about yourself, and part of stopping was realising that repeating yourself is the death of creativity. I just know that I want to try to stretch myself and become another person … I hope that’s what next year will bring … Lots of girlfriends said to me, ‘Oh, you feel so much relief in your thirties, you know who you are.’

“I thought I was there, but then realised I’m actually not. I think I’ll probably always be quite a ‘searching’ person … I can’t picture getting to a point where I’ll feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve grown.’ I still feel like a child.”