The red carpet at this year’s London Film Festival shimmered with cultural significance as actor Ellie Bamber and legendary supermodel Kate Moss appeared side by side for the special screening of Moss & Freud — the much-anticipated biopic that delves into one of the most quietly fascinating relationships in contemporary art history.
Bamber, known for her magnetic screen presence, takes on the role of Moss in the film, portraying the supermodel during a transformative period in her life: her deeply personal and creative connection with the late British painter Lucian Freud. Together, the two women brought a palpable sense of legacy and intimacy to the event — one embodying a role, the other revisiting a defining chapter of her own life.
The film is written and directed by James Lucas, the UK filmmaker best known for the Oscar‑winning short The Phone Call. Lucas was drawn to this story — to its emotional tension, its connection to art, beauty, fame, and identity. He has said that aspects of the film aligned with his own sensibilities: the interplay of character, the idea of artistic process, the psychological topography of being seen versus being known.
Under Lucas’s direction, Moss & Freud does more than recreate a famous artist‑muse story. It seeks to peel back layers: what it’s like to be a global icon when what matters is what lies beneath the surface — self‑doubt, curiosity, vulnerability, power dynamics. The settings — Freud’s Holland Park studio, early‑2000s London, the world of fashion — act as more than backdrop. They are almost characters in themselves: the studio where rawness is exposed, and London with its glam, grit, and spotlight.
Kate Moss is far from a passive subject in this film. She’s an executive producer, involved from very early in script development. That means she has had influence over how her story is told: choices about tone, authenticity, what to reveal, how to portray the emotional stakes.
Derek Jacobi plays Lucian Freud. His role is essential in shaping the dynamic: a revered artist, in his late life, with a complex past, whose approach to painting — relentlessly honest, raw, uncompromising — forces Moss to face parts of herself she perhaps hid or ignored.
The interactions between Freud and Moss become the core of the film: the slow burn of trust, tension, admiration, and maybe even discomfort. The sittings span months; for Moss, they are more than modeling sessions. They become transformative. For Freud, painting a figure of global fame is unusual — he was notoriously private, rarely working with celebrities — so there is also the artist confronting fame and expectations, the muse challenging the painter’s preconceptions
