Elizabeth Debicki: Playing The Crown’s Diana shed light on the dangers of fame

Elizabeth Debicki says playing Diana, Princess of Wales reminded her of how dangerous fame can be.

The 32-year-old actress - who portrays the late royal in the latest series of Netflix drama The Crown - has insisted she’s never been interested in being a celebrity but her latest role made her realise just how difficult fame can be for someone like Diana who was struggling with her personal life.

She told Vogue Australia: “As a concept, [fame is] not one that appeals to me. The main thing it does is take away one of the most valuable things people possess, which is a right to privacy. I’ve seen that on people I really love and care for. Fame does not discriminate between how vulnerable you feel that day, what’s happening in your personal life, how tired you are, or how much you really don’t want your photograph taken.”

Elizabeth also opened up about her own insecurities, admitting she spent much of her 20s questioning whether she was “beautiful” enough to be an actress.

She added: “’In the beginning, I was always like, ‘Why is this part of my job that I’m supposed to look beautiful and put dresses on and be good at it?’ I was always like, ‘I don’t know how to do this. Am I enough?’’

"Fame does not discriminate between how vulnerable you feel that day, what’s happening in your personal life, how tired you are, or how much you really don’t want your photograph taken.” Photo / Netflix

However, now she’s in her 30s, Elizabeth says she’s been able to shrug off worries about her appearance.

She previously opened up about the “pressure” of playing Diana in The Crown and said it was particularly difficult when she had to wear a version of the late royal’s “revenge dress” - which she wore the night her estranged husband Charles, then Prince of Wales, admitted he’d been unfaithful in a TV interview.

Elizabeth told Vogue UK: “The revenge dress was pressure ... It’s a complex dress. I let the fittings happen around me while I thought about what the dress meant. Why this dress? She’d had it for two or three years. It was super risqué at the time ...”

Princess Diana's now iconic "revenge dress". Photo / Getty Images

“She was claiming the space. The way she walked out of that car, the luminosity, the strength of her as that car door opened, she was so fast and so forward. It’s an extraordinary thing to watch. To decide what you’re saying about yourself through fashion … it was a currency. An incredibly powerful currency.”