Simran Hans
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Articles by Simran Hans
‘I need to prove my family’s sacrifice was worth it’: how pop auteur Shygirl slogged her way to the top
Leaving the important stuff to chance isn’t Shygirl’s style. First aid kit, wind-up radio, batteries: earlier this morning, the singer filled her online shopping basket in preparation for impending disaster. She had read a news article advising households to put together an emergency kit. “I’m that kind of person,” she says, grinning. She woke her boyfriend, who was asleep in bed next to her.
‘I need to prove my family’s sacrifice was worth it’: how pop auteur Shygirl slogged her way to the top
‘I work hard, but I really prioritise chilling’ … Shygirl in 2026. Photograph: Jessica Madavo Leaving the important stuff to chance isn’t Shygirl’s style. First aid kit, wind-up radio, batteries: earlier this morning, the singer filled her online shopping basket in preparation for impending disaster. She had read a news article advising households to put together an emergency kit. “I’m that kind of person,” she says, grinning. She woke her boyfriend, who was asleep in bed next to her.
‘The first half of my 20s was hell': Maisie Williams on her tough childhood and why she's been having more fun since Game of Thrones
Maisie Williams has dabbled in witchcraft exactly once. The actor was getting ready to audition for a part in a film. “I wanted it so badly that I went on to Etsy, and I paid a witch to manifest me the role,” she says, poker-faced. “It didn't work, and that was where my days of witchcraft ended,” she adds, breaking into an infectious cackle. The spell may not have worked that time, but Williams will soon try her own hand at witchcraft on screen in Practical Magic 2.
‘The first half of my 20s was hell’: Maisie Williams on her tough childhood and why she’s been having more fun since Game of Thrones
Maisie Williams has dabbled in witchcraft exactly once. The actor was getting ready to audition for a part in a film. "I wanted it so badly that I went on to Etsy, and I paid a witch to manifest me the role," she says, poker-faced. "It didn't work, and that was where my days of witchcraft ended," she adds, breaking into an infectious cackle. The spell may not have worked that time, but Williams will soon try her own hand at witchcraft on screen in Practical Magic 2.
‘The first half of my 20s was hell’: Maisie Williams on her tough childhood and why she’s been having more fun since Game of Thrones
Maisie Williams has dabbled in witchcraft exactly once. The actor was getting ready to audition for a part in a film. “I wanted it so badly that I went on to Etsy, and I paid a witch to manifest me the role,” she says, poker-faced. “It didn’t work, and that was where my days of witchcraft ended,” she adds, breaking into an infectious cackle. The spell may not have worked that time, but Williams will soon try her own hand at witchcraft on screen in Practical Magic 2.
‘The first half of my 20s was hell’: Maisie Williams on her tough childhood and why she’s been having more fun since Game of Thrones
Maisie Williams has dabbled in witchcraft exactly once. The actor was getting ready to audition for a part in a film. "I wanted it so badly that I went on to Etsy, and I paid a witch to manifest me the role," she says, poker-faced. "It didn't work, and that was where my days of witchcraft ended," she adds, breaking into an infectious cackle. The spell may not have worked that time, but Williams will soon try her own hand at witchcraft on screen in Practical Magic 2.
Fleabag at 10: did Phoebe Waller-Bridge usher in a wave of female-fronted series – or straitjacket them?
Ten years ago, Phoebe Waller-Bridge locked eyes with the camera and asked her audience: “Do I have a massive arsehole?” An unexpected punchline to a monologue about a booty call that went surprisingly – and literally – south, it announced Waller-Bridge as a new star of British telly. The half-hour comedy series Fleabag broke the fourth wall, and the internet.
The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’
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Steven Spielberg is often described as the inventor of the “event movie” – or as the creator of our new age of IP supremacy, in which the genre property is more important than any above-the-title film star. But that isn’t quite it. He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it. In fact, he synthesised both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent.
By Anne Billson, Peter Bradshaw Verified, Catherine Bray, Ryan Gilbey Verified, Simran Hans Verified, Stuart Heritage Verified, Ann Lee, Joseph McBride Verified, Sasha Mistlin, Gwilym Mumford Verified, Andrew Pulver Verified, Scott Tobias Verified, Edgar Wright
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Yahoo Movies Canada
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The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’
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Spielberg’s early achievement was to bring about an evolutionary sea change, reinvigorating pulp-popular themes and ideas and giving them a new maturity and mainstream box office credibility. The idea of a giant shark crazed with a vindictive taste for human flesh or dinosaurs busting out of an amusement park is something that Roger Corman or Ed Wood Jr might have made in two weeks with risible rubber creatures. In Jaws and Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s production values were state of the art.
By Anne Billson, Peter Bradshaw Verified, Catherine Bray, Ryan Gilbey Verified, Simran Hans Verified, Stuart Heritage Verified, Ann Lee, Joseph McBride Verified, Sasha Mistlin, Gwilym Mumford Verified, Andrew Pulver Verified, Scott Tobias Verified, Edgar Wright
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Inkl
From Michael to Back to Black, many authorised music biopics are becoming bland propaganda. Fans deserve more
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From Michael to Back to Black, many authorised music biopics are becoming bland propaganda. Fans deserve more
Jaafar Jackson in the new biopic Michael. Photograph: Glen Wilson/Lionsgate As a giant glittering ferris wheel dissolves into a closeup of Michael Jackson’s face, legendary producer Quincy Jones explains to him that what people want is “pure escapism”. Michael, a new biopic about Jackson’s rise to fame directed by Antoine Fuqua, is certainly that: a fantastical greatest hits playlist scrubbed clean of the darkness that tarnished the singer’s reputation.
Orwell: 2+2=5: Raoul Peck’s portrait of George Orwell dives deep into Nineteen Eighty-Four but finds few new answers
In the back seat of a car, a man repeatedly quizzes a child on the equation 2+2. Satisfied the correct answer has been committed to memory, he warns him: “A lot of people will tell you the answer’s five. Usually, they’re called governments.” The line is inspired by George Orwell’s fable Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which the authoritarian government of the superpower Oceania works to construct a cowed, self-policing population, entirely hollowed of any faith in dissent or self-determination.
Splitsville: this brilliantly unromantic open marriage comedy pulls no punches
Starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, Michael Angelo Covino’s wry comedy about two couples’ experiments with ethical non-monogamy revives the screwball in delightfully slapstick fashion. 23 March 2026 Michael Angelo Covino as Paul, Kyle Marvin as Carey, Adria Arjona as Ashley and Dakota Johnson as Julie in Splitsville (2025) Monogamy, gradually losing its status as a secular religion in our era of endless options, has come under the movie microscope recently in varied forms.
‘The dream is to be a standup, but everyone who knows me says: Please don’t’ – Riz Ahmed on chaos, comedy, and defying categorisation
Riz Ahmed, photographed in London this month.Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz/The Guardian (Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz/The Guardian) Riz Ahmed was multitasking. It was February in London, and the actor was doing an interview with a men’s magazine en route to collect his kid from school. So far, so starry. “Here’s the reality,” says Ahmed today, palms slamming down hard on the table. “I’m late for the school run. I’m stuck in traffic.
Broken English: meta Marianne Faithfull doc is a heartbreaking document of her final performance
A man in a long grey overcoat and 1950s fedora arrives at an archival facility. He is the Record Officer, and shortly he will conduct an interview – he is the actor George MacKay, dressed up like a noir detective. This flourish is a way for directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard to announce their intentions, as nonfiction filmmakers whose project is distinct from reportage.
The Love that Remains: a family breakdown is treated with a light tragicomic touch in Hlynur Pálmason’s impressive directorial balancing act
Tolstoy’s often-invoked quote about families and their feelings gets turned inside-out in The Love That Remains. The Icelandic clan at the centre of Hlynur Pálmason’s curious and unsettling domestic drama isn’t like any other household, but whether they’re happy or unhappy in their own way is a matter of perspective.
‘I didn’t know how much I would be in the film … it might have scared me’
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Sinners star Miles Caton: ‘I didn’t know how much I would be in the film … it might have scared me’
No stranger to the spotlight … Miles Caton. Photograph: Michael Rowe/Getty Images for IMDb It’s lunchtime in New York City, and Miles Caton is still in bed. That morning, the 20-year-old star of Sinners set his alarm for 8.30am so he could watch the Oscar nominations live. “As soon as I woke up, I went straight to YouTube,” he says, where he learned Sinners had been nominated for 16 Academy Awards, more than any other film in Oscars history.
Stacy Martin on risky roles, tequila at the Oscars and her Jurassic Park dream
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‘I don’t want to do the same thing over and over’: Stacy Martin on risky roles, tequila at the Oscars and her Jurassic Park dream
Stacy Martin … ‘Some of my friends love quantum physics. I’m trying to wrap my head around it.’ Photograph: Julian Ungano Stacy Martin is “not a religious person”. Still, the actor insists things have happened in her life that have made her realise there’s “a whole expanse of things that are unexplainable”. Once, at home in north London, she noticed a lightbulb flickering. She couldn’t solve the mystery: no matter how many times she changed it, the bulb continued to blink.
Goofy! Unvampy! Pouty! Implausible! With nine films on the go, can Charli xcx act?
Regret and shame ... in The Moment, a mockumentary imagining success going to her head. Photograph: Everett/Shutterstock In the back of a cab, Charli xcx drags a makeup wipe across her face. A closeup of that face, with its distinctive halo of dark hair, the lipstick-smeared pout and lush, overgrown eyebrows, is perhaps the most striking scene in her new film The Moment. Charli peels a strip of ugly stick-on gems from her lower lash line, regret and shame flashing across her face.
Daniel Blumberg: Louder Than Words
05.02.26 Words by: Simran Hans Photography: Simonas Berūkštis Creative Direction: Michelle Helena Janssen Styling: Justin Hamilton Production: Aisha Kemp Executive Production: Luke Sutton Grooming: Elda Kastrati Set Design: Tamar Lang Backdrop: Canvhaus Photography Assistant: Courtney Campbell Stylist Assistant: Aaron Aina Production Assistant: Nia Lloyd Indie-pop stardom was never the plan for Daniel Blumberg – and winning an Oscar probably wasn’t on the cards either.
Bold docuseries or dull branding exercise? What The End of an Era really told us about Taylor Swift
In the behind-the-scenes documentary series Taylor Swift: The End of an Era, the singer Florence Welch ascends to the stage to perform their duet Florida!!! to a crowd of 90,000 people. Welch later reflects on their duet at Wembley Stadium with a mix of awe and bemusement. “Taylor is my friend,” she says.
Chase Infiniti: One breakthrough after another
This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here. One day in early September, Chase Infiniti was sitting in her new apartment in Chicago, surrounded by boxes and quietly freaking out. The 25-year-old actor had recently returned home from Toronto, where she’d spent the summer filming The Testaments, the sequel to the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale.
LaKeith Stanfield
LaKeith Stanfield has built a career on being unpredictable. Since starring in Short Term 12, the Californian actor has featured in Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Boots Riley’s surreal satire Sorry to Bother You, Rian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out and Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Actor Robert Aramayo: ‘Like anybody who hasn’t had the education, I thought Tourette’s was all about swearing’
‘I did have trepidation, of course I did’ … Robert Aramayo. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for IMDb Kirk Jones was feeling nervous. The director was two weeks away from shooting his new film, a biopic of the pioneering Scottish Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson, and he still hadn’t seen his lead actor perform any of the script. Jones had been impressed by Robert Aramayo in the supernatural Netflix series Behind Her Eyes, and liked the actor when they met over Zoom.
Deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis has a message she wants you to hear
When Rose Ayling-Ellis is lip-reading, she's guessing most of the time. "You can get the shape of a mouth," she said recently, but to understand what someone is saying, context is everything. "You have to pick up body language, the mood, the vibe," she said during an interview in London. Ayling-Ellis, 30, said that learning to lip-read had been "a survival technique." The actress, who was born deaf, speaks and also uses British Sign Language, and was aided in an interview by an interpreter.
Esta atriz surda tem um recado que ela quer que você ouça
Quando Rose Ayling-Ellis está lendo lábios, ela está adivinhando na maior parte do tempo. “Você pode ver o formato da boca”, ela diz. Mas, para entender o que alguém está dizendo, o contexto é tudo. “Você tem que captar a linguagem corporal, o humor, a vibração,” completa. Ayling-Ellis, 30, afirma que aprender a ler lábios foi “uma técnica de sobrevivência.” A atriz britânica, que nasceu surda, fala e também usa a Língua de Sinais Britânica, contou com a ajuda de um intérprete na entrevista.
Rose Ayling-Ellis Has a Message She Wants You to Hear
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. When Rose Ayling-Ellis is lip reading, she’s guessing most of the time. “You can get the shape of a mouth,” she said recently, but to understand what someone is saying, context is everything. “You have to pick up body language, the mood, the vibe,” she said.
[Safe] in LA
Todd Haynes’ haunting 1995 film [Safe] screened in theatres just a few months shy of when I would trade the insular safety of my mother’s womb for the real world. It was an eventful year in the US: the Oklahoma City bombing, the OJ trial, the deadly Chicago heat wave. The latter had killed 739 people, mostly elderly poor residents who could not afford air conditioning. [Safe], however, takes place eight years prior, in 1987, at the height of the Reagan/Bush era.
‘How much can one person take?’: Posy Sterling on her intense portrayal of a mum trapped in custody hell
‘The repercussions last a lifetime’ … Posy Sterling.Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian. Stylist: Laura Parkes; HMU: Jade Bird using Laura Mercier, Kate Somerville & Living Proof; Suit and blouse: Bella Freud. Each morning before filming Lollipop, Posy Sterling took a giant bucket outside, filled it with ice and climbed in. Never mind that it was November or that her call time was at 5am; the actor would take daily dips in the freezing water in the dark.
One to One: John & Yoko review: New York state of mind
Using the couple’s own tape recordings and a patchwork of archive clips, Kevin Macdonald takes an intriguing show-don’t-tell approach to the first 18 months of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s move to New York in late 1971. 11 April 2025 When John Lennon and Yoko Ono left the stately pile of Tittenhurst Park outside Ascot to move into a modest tworoom apartment on Bank Street in New York’s West Village, they installed a TV at the foot of the bed, got in, and never turned it off.
The Return review: Homer sweet Homer
Uberto Pasolini trades a fantastic voyage for an intense portrait of a marriage as the long-suffering Odysseus, played by Ralph Fiennes, returns from the Trojan War. 11 April 2025 Uberto Pasolini’s reworking of The Odyssey shuns spectacle to craft a potent, grown-up character study that mines the emotional core of Homer’s epic.
Holy Cow review: play your curds right
In France’s Jura region, a laddish 18-year-old becomes the family breadwinner when his father suddenly dies. While working on a local dairy farm, he devises a plan to win a cheesemaking competition with a cash prize of €30,000, learning important romantic and culinary lessons in the process. In rural France, on a sweltering summer’s day, a middle-aged woman dunks her bare arms into a vat of scalding milk.
Seán McGirr's Creative Community at McQueen
This story originally appears in i-D 374, The Unknown Issue. Order yours now. written by SIMRAN HANS photography SARAH STEDEFORD styling CAMILLE BIDAULT-WADDINGTON At 36 years old, Seán McGirr is one of the youngest creative directors of any major fashion brand. Unlike the rest of his age demo, the Irish designer and creative director of Alexander McQueen is highly offline.
Robbie Williams: “¿Y si el mono tiene más éxito que yo?”
Cuando Michael Gracey evoca a Robbie Williams piensa en un “hombre del espectáculo”. Gracey, que dirigió el musical cinematográfico de 2017 El gran showman, tiene cierta experiencia en centrar un largometraje de gran presupuesto en torno a un artista capaz de hacer trabajar a una multitud. Su última película gira en torno a Williams.
Robbie Williams regresa con una película biográfica, aunque la estrella es un mono
Pop and Rock MusicMonkeys and ApesMoviesGracey, MichaelWilliams, RobbieBetter Man (Movie) Tuvo 14 sencillos en los primeros lugares de las listas en Gran Bretaña, pero no es muy conocido en Estados Unidos. En la nueva película 'Better Man', un mono animado por computadora lo interpreta. Cuando Michael Gracey piensa en Robbie Williams, "pienso en un hombre del espectáculo", dijo.
Robbie Williams regresa con una pelĂcula biográfica, aunque la estrella es un mono
Cuando Michael Gracey piensa en Robbie Williams, "pienso en un hombre del espectáculo", dijo. Gracey, que dirigió el musical cinematográfico de 2017 El gran showman, tiene cierta experiencia en centrar un largometraje de gran presupuesto en torno a un artista capaz de hacer trabajar a una multitud. Su última película gira en torno a Williams.
The Girl with the Needle review: nightmare yarn
Fiction is littered with unwanted children. Their lots are rarely happy. From Oliver Twist to Harry Potter, these orphans are, as Dickens has it, pale with anxiety and sadness and the closeness of their prison. Longing for love while looking like death. Opening with a series of deformed, grimacing portraits – faces snarled into rictuses, as if Francis Bacon’s screaming portraits had sprung to terrible life – The Girl with the Needle takes Dickens’s simile horribly literally.
Babygirl review: she likes milk and it shows
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson have blisteringly hot chemistry as a tech CEO and intern who spark up an affair in a film that never punishes its protagonist for her desires. 8 January 2025 Sex is literally the beginning and end of Halina Reijn’s sly, slinky Babygirl, which opens and closes with Nicole Kidman’s Type-A tech CEO Romy having intercourse.
A Real Pain review: touring test
Jesse Eisenberg’s story of two cousins who go on a ‘Holocaust tour’ doesn’t quite work as a road-trip movie, but the electric pairing of Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin brings wit and sensitivity to the film’s dark subject matter.
Nickel Boys review: the radical cinema of RaMell Ross
A Florida orange hangs sweetly from its tree: the camera pans left, and it becomes clear that the person gazing at it is horizontal, lying on the grass below. Assuming this person’s point of view, where it remains for much of the film, the director invites the audience to witness the sun warming their outstretched arm. It’s a sensory experience, one that asks viewers to engage through their bodies first.
In the '90s, She Was a Surprise Oscar Nominee. It May Happen Again.
In the spring of 2023, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was on a flight from Los Angeles to London, feeling "petrified." The actress was off to spend the next five months working with the veteran British director Mike Leigh. As with all of Leigh's projects, there was no script, and Jean-Baptiste didn't know she would be playing the lead, let alone what the film would be about. It would also be the pair's first time working together in almost 30 years.
Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungano Nyoni on tackling taboos on screen
In Lusaka, in the middle of the night, Rungano Nyoni woke up with a start.
Moana 2 film review — rocky return to Polynesia as new songs lack buoyancy
“You’ve paid your hard-earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it.
How ‘Blitz’ re-creates war-torn London
The film is told from the perspective of George (Elliott Heffernan), a biracial 9-year-old who is evacuated from London to the countryside as bombs descend on his hometown. By SIMRAN HANS and SARAH ECKINGER In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee.
How 'Blitz' Recreates War-Torn London Original
In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee. The photograph, taken during the eight-month-long bombardment of British cities by German forces during World War II, was one of the images that inspired Steve McQueen's new film " Blitz," currently in select theaters.
Paying for It review: a Torontonian time machine
Reviewed from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival For Torontonians of a certain vintage – let’s say late Gen-X-ish, and with at least one box worth of hand-crafted mixtapes in storage – Sook Yin-Lee’s new feature Paying For It may feel like a time machine.
My Favourite Cake review: sweet rebellion
After a long day, 70-year-old Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) is getting ready for bed. Preparing to brush her teeth, she appraises herself in the mirror. Squinting, she smudges turquoise eyeshadow over her eyelids. Better? Not quite. Sighing, she dots lipstick on to her cheekbones, rubbing it in with the back of her hands, and applying the coral to her lips. Her expression is sceptical, and then defeated. She retreats to the sofa, passing out in front of the TV.
‘My anxiety had got to the point where if I was left alone I was a twitching mess’
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