When in Rome … discover yourself

A British star on the world’s stage Lily James’ repertoire of roles includes Meryl Streep’s daughter in “Mama Mia! Here We Go Again,” “Baywatch” siren Pamela Anderson (“Pam & Tommy”) and WWII Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s dedicated secretary in the Oscar-winning “Darkest Hour.” “Finally Dawn,” in theaters Friday, sees James, 36, as Josephine Esperanto, a Hollywood star in 1950s Rome playing – and behaving very much like — Egypt’s first female Pharoah. Her American boyfriend (Joe Keery, “Stranger Things”) is her costar and Willem Dafoe her cosmopolitan limo driver. The movie Josephine’s making may be a swords, sex and sandals fantasy but it gifts James, dazzling in full, flowing costume and makeup, with a memorable entrance as she leads her entourage down a hallway and out into the stadium where from her throne she rules on a life or death gladiatorial match. “I was sent the script by Saverio Costanzo, the director-writer,” James recalled in a Zoom interview. “I know actors say this a lot, but I was truly so moved by the story, by his writing. It’s like a giant poem, really. “Then I connected to the character, an enriching, fulfilling experience, set in the Cinecittà studios in Rome, with this beautiful cast telling a story with great complexity.” Josephine is an American movie star in an Italian production. We hear from Cinecittà’s Italian workers she’s an often impossible diva. What are we supposed to think about her? “Well, she’s a bit of a mystery for sure. In a way, I think she’s engineered and built this version of herself – the movie star version of Josephine that she’s built over the years, in order to survive Hollywood and to become a star. “But you realize that the distance between who she truly is and this projection of herself is getting greater and greater. And this very lonely woman has emerged. “She’s very unsatisfied. She’s lost her inspiration – and then she meets this young girl who’s all innocence and purity and optimism with a real, genuine beauty. “I think Josephine sort of falls in love and wants to destroy her, all at once. They go off into the night. Kind of this going down the rabbit hole like in Alice in Wonderland. “As this evening transpires, you see a woman unravel and by the end, I almost feel that she’s given up this character. Certainly as an actress, she doesn’t have the energy anymore to pretend.” While Josephine is truly a movie star but do we know if she can act? Does it matter? “It’s a very heightened style of acting we were going for in the Egyptian setting. Certainly, not the naturalism we’re used to now. “Personally, I think that she’s a wonderful actress. But she’s lost her will to do it.”