With its stunning scenery and slew of fine British acting talent, ITV’s Downton Abbey was always destined to be popular with its fellow countrymen and women. I come from a working-class background where we had very little money and so I’ve had to try to reimagine myself as Lady Mary on many different levels Michelle Dockery Whether anyone could have predicted the global impact of the series, which ran from 2010 to 2015, is another matter entirely – but this year, after months of fervent speculation, the Crawley family, including Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham, and Dame Maggie Smith as acid-tongued matriarch the Dowager Countess, are set to conquer Hollywood with a feature-length film. Idris Elba explores his love of cars in a new film to promote Grand Basel For Dockery, getting the chance to once again portray the eldest of the Grantham children, and mother to the future heir of Downton itself, was a comforting experience after her own high-profile forays into cinema of late. “She is a very modern woman in the sense that she has a strong sense of independence and refuses to be bullied or manipulated,” says Dockery of Lady Mary. “I’ve enjoyed softening some of the harsher sides of her personality and revealing so many more layers to her. Mary’s a very complex character. She also finds relationships with men to be more problematic and that reflects the dilemma of many women of her time who felt enormous pressure and faced many restrictions when it came to relationships and marriage.” Born in East London, Dockery first made her name as part of the National Youth Theatre before minor TV roles gave way to her Downton breakthrough at the turn of the decade. In spite of her recent cinematic turns – including big-budget action-thriller Non-Stop in 2014 – Dockery still harbours huge affection for the stage. ‘Chinese Paladin’ star Hu Ge set to perform on ‘Chunwan’ gala “My roots are really in theatre,” she explains. “One of my most important roles was playing Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Old Vic in London. I received a lot of attention for that and that was largely how I came to be cast for Downton because the show’s executive producer had seen me as Eliza on stage.” Away from the cameras, Dockery has often been described as the antithesis of the cold Lady Mary – and the star admits that she has little connection to the aristocratic leanings of her most acclaimed character. “She’s very different from me in terms of her background and bearing,” Dockery explains. “I come from a working-class background where we had very little money and so I’ve had to try to reimagine myself as Lady Mary on many different levels. “Even on an emotional level, she’s an expert at hiding her true feelings whereas I’m much more of an open book. I don’t like to hold back my emotions and I can’t, really.” That being said, both Dockery and Lady Mary have experienced tragedy in their time, with the former’s fiancée having passed away in 2015 at the age of just 34 after a short illness. Having stayed resolutely private about the event, the star can at least rely on her love of acting, held since she was a child, to offer her a form of “escapism”. “I’ve always found it pleasant and creatively stimulating to be able to get up on stage and perform,” she says. “At first, I thought dancing was my calling but when I was accepted into drama school at age 16, I found that acting was much more exciting and inspiring to me. “I loved everything about acting so that was it, really. I enjoy being able to hide behind a character, and being able to play with your emotions and realise certain fantasies. I’d go insane if I weren’t able to perform. And it has nothing to do with my ego. For me the entire interest lies in the process, not in the final results.” I’ve always found it creatively stimulating to be able to get up on stage and perform Michelle Dockery Of course, Dockery’s inclusion in the new Downton Abbey film not only marks arguably her biggest big-screen project to date, but it also comes at a time when actresses coming into their prime as she is are enjoying a new sense of agency in the industry. Recent sweeping changes, borne from the Weinstein scandal and subsequent social media campaigns, have ensured that modern Hollywood has never been more receptive to strong female characters. For Dockery, however, the five-season TV run of Downton Abbey gave her the chance to understand the experiences of women in earlier times, right through until the burgeoning of the women’s rights movement in the UK, in a way that still connects with contemporary audiences. 5 new Netflix shows to cure your Game of Thrones hangover “I love that,” she says. “In the present day, women have so much freedom to dress and express themselves. But in that time, emotions were kept much more under check – people were very private when it came to expressing their innermost feelings. It requires you to adapt yourself to a different mentality and it’s quite a special thing to be able to capture that. “Then World War I gave women a chance to demonstrate their usefulness and show that they could play a much more important role in society. It helped change attitudes and allowed women to be more independent and more assertive.” Dockery will not be settling down to see the latest instalment of Lady Mary’s journey when it hits screens later this year – “I never watch the TV series or films I act in.” The intervening time between the close of Downton’s fifth season has seen her star alongside the likes of Ryan Reynolds and Charlotte Rampling, but there’s little doubt that the impact the show continues to have on her career and profile worldwide remains immense. “I was at an event in New York and I was standing there with Laura Carmichael and Gary Oldman strode over and just launched into how much he loved the show,” she says with a laugh. “That was amazing as I’m his biggest fan ever. And I remember being quite blindsided by Tom Ford; before I even got to tell him how much I loved his clothes, he was like, ‘Great work on Downton !’ “It’s changed my life; it’s changed all our lives. It’s opened up opportunities I never thought were possible. No one ever imagined it would be this much of a success, so you just feel so fortunate to be part of this family – it’s once-in-a-lifetime stuff.” Want more stories like this? Sign up here . Follow STYLE on Facebook , Instagram , YouTube and Twitter