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>> Tell us what you think: Should Sienna Miller apologize to Pittsburgh?
Sienna Miller is seated at the foot of her bed, scrolling through her iPod, trying to figure out which artists she ought to include as favorites on the MySpace page we're in the middle of setting up for her under a carefully selected pseudonym. Led Zeppelin? Yeah, but that's what everyone says. OK, put the Ramones. How about the Kinks? Definitely yes. Miller never had her own computer until a couple of weeks ago: For her, the Internet is still full of magic and wonder. "YouTube is my new favorite," says the twenty-four-year-old actress, and then she giddily boots up a video of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger at Brazil's annual Carnival in 1983. "Can you believe it?" she says, as we watch Arnie mack on Brazilian women. "That's the Governator!"
We're in Pittsburgh, where Miller is shooting an adaptation of Michael Chabon's book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. "Shitsburgh," she called it earlier over wine and garlic-parmesan Buffalo wings at the hotel bar. "Can you believe this is my life? Will you pity me when you're back in your funky New York apartment and I'm still in Pittsburgh? I need to get more glamorous films and stop with my indie year."
Within the first nine months of 2006, Miller had already shot five independent movies. She started the year working on what could be a career-making role, and the one most likely to bring her fame beyond the notoriety she's achieved for dating -- and, subsequently, being cuckolded by -- Jude Law. Set for release early next year, Factory Girl sees Miller as Andy Warhol muse (and Bob Dylan consort) Edie Sedgwick, who died of an overdose at the age of twenty-eight.
"Edie was the hardest part to shake," says Miller. "I'd done about a year's work of having her in my head. She was so tortured and walked this fine line where at any moment she could just fall apart. But I've always been intrigued by anyone so destructive." Her performance is already receiving major Oscar buzz.
Though Miller admits to having some "destructive qualities," she's more earth angel than tortured soul. A style icon, she's oft-compared to Kate Moss, except Miller's the more-approachable, less-troubled version: a bohemian vixen who wants to rock your gypsy soul, just like way back in the days of old.
Miller says she's lived a relatively sheltered life but drew inspiration for Sedgwick's anguished aura from "a huge personal drama" she endured last summer. Law, whom she had been dating since the two met on the set of Alfie in 2003, admitted that he'd had an affair with his children's nanny. Talking to Miller now, one gets the sense that it wasn't so much the infidelity that upset her as the media's reaction to it. "I don't know, monogamy is a weird thing for me," she says. "It's an overrated virtue, because, let's face it, we're fucking animals." After a much-chronicled breakup, she is still seeing Law.
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Miller suggests that the scandal -- which the press dubbed "Nannygate" -- was all the more upsetting because it reinforced her fear that no one was taking her seriously as an actress. "Everything happened in the wrong order," she says. "You become very known for being someone's girlfriend, and all of a sudden there's all this hype and buzz for all the wrong reasons."
Even from early childhood, Miller says, she hoped to end up on the silver screen. Her mother, actress Jo Miller, went into labor with Sienna while in the audience for The Nutcracker in New York. Once she'd made up her mind to become an actor, Miller says, she never let herself consider a Plan B. "I'm a big believer in positive thinking," she says. "Some people think destiny's crap, but I've willed myself to do most things I wanted."
Even as her career is getting under way, Miller is already worried about her expiration date. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, she says, might be one of her last chances to star in a "youth film." "It's so hard for women in this business," she notes. "And I want to be doing this when I'm fifty." She does not, however, plan on putting her personal life in the back seat. "I can't wait to have babies," she says. "Jude has three children, and I have never tried to be their mum or anything, but I've had the benefit of living with them and loving them without being the parent. But I love the idea of being a working mum and having my kid on the set."
Though her own parents split when she was five, Miller says their relationship is a model for the kind of parent she'd like to be some day. "My parents were really liberal in the early years," she explains. "Our house was always full of artists and musicians, and I knew from the start my parents were naughty and did things that other people's parents didn't." She lifts her goblet of cheap pinot grigio and laughs. "But it's great to know that you can go to your parents and say, 'I've done some things you wouldn't be proud of me for,' and they can say, 'I've done the same thing.' The fact of the matter is that nobody's perfect: Even people who project perfection, you know they're flawed."