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Lily Cole is a renaissance woman. The former model has one of fashion’s most unique careers—from acting in films like Star Wars: The Last Jedi to branching into tech entrepreneurship with her social site, Impossible. Whether she’s contributing special reports about Greece’s refugee crisis for Vice, making art films with partner Kwame Ferreira, or raising awareness about climate change, Cole uses her platform for creative expression and social activism. Posing for the world’s biggest photographers may have made her a supermodel, but Cole has, through her varied projects, helped to redefine what that term means.
A unique talent right from the start, Cole was discovered at a burger bar by modeling agents at Storm and almost immediately became a sensation. Landing her first international Vogue cover at age 16 (alongside fellow phenom Gemma Ward), she became one of the baby dolls—the early aughts models with wide eyes, high foreheads, and pre-Raphaelite good looks who brought a fresh energy to editorials and runway shows. Looking like they stepped out of a fairy tale, these women helped usher in a period of high-fashion fantasy. For Cole, this meant transforming into a Regency-era lady-in-waiting, playing Hansel and Gretel with Andrew Garfield for Annie Leibovitz, and embodying a host of otherworldly characters in the pages of Vogue.
Though her day job requires that she pose in surreal settings, Cole has remained surprisingly grounded in reality. Picking up a diploma from King’s College, Cambridge in 2011; serving as an ambassador for the Environmental Justice Foundation; and committing herself to humanitarian causes, Cole has been a shining example for celebrities looking to make a positive impact. Recently tapped by the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the Brontë Society to help commemorate the author of Wuthering Heights on her 200th birthday, Cole became the center of a minor scandal when one scholar objected to having a model-actress on the committee. Responding with the pluck of one of Brontë’s heroines, Cole penned an essay on the treatment of women in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, silencing her critics in the most elegant manner possible.