Name Trudie Styler Role Actress | ||
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Children Eliot Paulina Sumner, Mickey Sumner, Giacomo Sumner, Jake Sumner Parents Harry Styler, Pauline Styler Movies Filth, Moon, Girl Most Likely, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Me Without You Similar People | ||
Martha Stewart Interviewing Actress Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler (born 6 January 1954) is an English actress, film producer and director. She is the wife of the musician Sting.
Contents
- Martha Stewart Interviewing Actress Trudie Styler
- Sting and Trudie Styler at home in Tuscany
- Early life
- Career and marriage
- Legal action
- Producer
- Actress selected
- Director
- References
Sting and Trudie Styler, at home in Tuscany
Early life
Trudie Styler was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. When Styler was two years old, she was hit by a van. She received severe facial injuries that left her badly scarred and required several plastic surgery operations up until the age of 18. Her classmates nicknamed her "scarface", which caused her to feel for many years that she was "not a very attractive person".
Career and marriage
Styler trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and went on to star in various period BBC productions. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she would meet rock musician Sting through Frances Tomelty, his then-wife and fellow cast member in a production of Shakespeare's MacBeth. Sting began to date Styler, divorcing Tomelty soon after.
Styler married Sting on August 20, 1992. They have four children: Bridget Michael (a.k.a. "Mickey" born 1984), Jake Sumner (born 1985), Eliot Paulina (nicknamed "Coco," born 1990) and Giacomo Luke (born 1995). Eliot is the lead singer for the band I Blame Coco.
Styler's theater credits include major roles for the RSC; Vagina Monologues; Twin Spirits, directed by John Caird (director); and the Seagull, directed by Max Stafford Clark.
She has appeared in many British television series such as The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Scold's Bridle, and in the United States television shows Empire (2015 TV series), The Night Of (TV Mini-Series 2016), and Falling Water (TV series).
Film work includes Lifetime Television's Living Proof (film) and Paul Haggis'The Next Three Days. Styler has also made seven popular mind-body fitness DVDs released by Gaia, Inc..
In the mid-nineties Styler established Xingu Films, a production company dedicated to supporting new talent, such as Guy Ritchie, Dito Montiel and Duncan Jones. In late July 2008 it was announced that Xingu had optioned American Reaper, an upcoming graphic novel written by Pat Mills, who would also write the screenplay.
Styler has produced and co-directed several award-winning documentaries and feature films, including Guy Ritchie's Lock,Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch (film); Duncan Jones' Moon (film); and Moving the Mountain (1994 film) which won the 1994 International Independent Documentary Award.
After moving to New York, Styler set up production company Maven Pictures with co-founder Celine Rattray in 2011. Their first feature, Girl Most Likely, starred Kristen Wiig; closely followed by Filth (film), starring James McAvoy; Black Nativity (film) starring Forest Whitaker; Ten Thousand Saints starring Ethan Hawke; and American Honey (film) starring Shia LaBeouf, which won Jury Prize (Cannes Film Festival) at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Styler's 2017 directorial debut, Freak Show (film), is based on the New York Times bestseller by James St. James, and stars Abigail Breslin, Alex Lawther, and Bette Midler. Freak Show debuted at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1989 Styler and Sting started the Rainforest Foundation Fund, an organization devoted to protecting rainforests and their indigenous peoples, and since 1991 she has produced regular Rock for the Rainforest benefits at Carnegie Hall. As a UNICEF Ambassador, Styler has also raised millions for their projects around the globe.
In 2008 it was reported that Styler donated £10,000 into the charitable Ama Sumani cancer fund. Sumani was terminally ill with cancer and unable to afford treatment in her native Ghana, but had been deported from a Cardiff hospital after the expiry of her visa. Sumani died on 19 March 2008.
Styler is also a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Legal action
In 2007, Styler and her husband were forced to pay record damages for unfair dismissal after a tribunal found them guilty of breaking employment law for firing their private chef when she became pregnant. According to evidence presented in court, Styler's chef had been made to work 14-hour days while heavily pregnant. On one occasion, when she was seven months pregnant, she had to take a train and taxi from the Lake House estate near Salisbury to London, costing £148 in travel and £300 overtime, to prepare soup and salad for Miss Styler.
In 2011, she and producer Celine Rattray founded Maven Pictures, a motion picture development, production, and financing company.