Sienna Miller: I was in New York. I’d been to a play or something at the beginning of March; I’d been on the subway. A friend of mine had a launch for this bag they were doing—it was for a charity—and I got a call saying that somebody from that party had tested positive. We all had to go into quarantine. I had rented this house upstate from November, just to see what that was like for six months. It was supposed to be a place to go on the weekends, and so my daughter could ride horses and have some form of kind of bucolic life. But it was amazingly fortuitous because we had a place to go.
One of the themes this year has been the complexity of parenthood. What have been the highs and lows for you and for Marlowe?
At the beginning it was strange and it was scary, but we felt quite cozy; it was really cold, I remember, in March. It felt like a kind of perpetual snow day. The homeschooling was something to adapt to, but she was thrilled, and I sort of loved it at the beginning. I just became really domesticated—sort of a 1940s housewife. I wanted to become really autodidactic and learn a language and read every book I had never read, and then I was just baking bread and trying to be a teacher. I didn’t get an awful lot done except that. It just became exhausting for her to be on a screen for that long, the patience that’s required. She’s still young enough to kind of need guidance. I don’t know that teaching is a profession for me, but we did our best.
How have these past few months shaped your beauty habits?
I think we all have more time on our hands. I dug out that Clarisonic brush thing. I don’t know how old the brush head is; I think it was a decade old, which is pretty revolting! I found the charger in the drawer, so I started using that. It was pretty great, actually. Then I started working with La Mer, so this care package came with the new concentrate and the crème—and if you are exfoliating to the degree that I was with this newfound old brush, and then using this incredible product, my skin actually became clearer than it’s ever been, which is strange. But I didn’t have an awful lot else to do besides pamper myself in moments.
What about hair management?
Actually I always cut everyone’s hair. It’s this weird skill that I have. We were quarantined with about eight people, and I became the hairdresser for everybody. I didn’t cut my own, but I cut Marlowe’s hair, and I did some pretty extreme cuts—a man who [went from] a long, tuck-behind-the-ear hairdo to a full short do. The scissors that I was using were the kitchen scissors, but anyway, it worked.
Did you delve into online fitness?
I had worked with this trainer, Joe Maysonet, when I played a cop in this movie 21 Bridges, and we would occasionally do a Zoom workout. It’s really hard to motivate unless I’m actually going somewhere and I’m in a room with someone else. But I did that, and I also did some Sunday morning yoga with this woman, Halle Becker, who’s incredible. Marlowe would kind of join in for the shavasana bit at the end. The girls that I was living with would do these 10-minute booty workouts, and we did some Jane Fonda stuff, which was pretty funny. But there was no consistent every single day I’m doing something. We were lucky because we were in the countryside, and so we could go for a walk. I’ve never been able to be that regimented when it comes to exercise. I try.