Nell Tiger Free, photographed exclusively for Empire in London on 12 Febuary 2024.
MARCO VITTUR
NELL TIGER FREE became an actor to exorcise her energy. “I was driving my mother insane,” the English actor explains from her flat in South London. “I had way too much energy as an 11-year-old. So she took me to a Saturday club where I could run around and sing and dance and act.”
Twenty-four-year-old Free has directed all that energy into dark-natured, suspenseful projects, from working with directors like Nicolas Winding Refn on Too Old To Die Young and M. Night Shyamalan on Servant to her first starring film role in The First Omen, the prequel to Richard Donner’s 1976 classic. “There’s the wiggle room to have the most fun on projects like that,” she says of her tense, terrifying body of work. “You really send yourself into ridiculous situations; situations you’d never be in in day-to-day life. It’s really rewarding.”