Blake Lively and 'The Age of Adaline': Gossip Girl comes of age

Blake Lively is best known for playing an affluent teenager. Her role as a woman who is trapped forever at 29 is a greater challenge, she tells Kaleem Aftab

Blake Lively (Rex)

Ever since the US teen drama series Gossip Girl stopped airing in 2012, Blake Lively has been making news for everything apart from acting. She got married to the actor Ryan Reynolds, whom she met on the set of The Green Lantern in 2010. They had a baby daughter together, born in December last year, and had people in a tizzy when the couple recently revealed that she was called James.

In all the excitement over the baby's gender-neutral name, and claims that it was part of a new trend, everyone seemed to forget that Blake was named after her grandmother's brother. As if starting a family wasn't enough, she also set up her own business, a lifestyle website that launched last July.

Now the 27-year-old is back doing the day job. She stars in The Age of Adaline, in which her titular character stops ageing after a freak car crash in 1937 that means she will be 29 forever. "It's nice to be back acting. I really needed a break."

It turns out that the desire to have a break came about while she was starring as socialite Serena van der Woodsen. In a remarkably frank appraisal she seems to share some of the criticism that was levelled at her performances; "I think when you do something for so many years you get comfortable and you can sort of go on autopilot and develop bad habits. I was the first perpetrator of that and I just didn't feel good about it."

The demands on her had been non-stop throughout her early adulthood. "I felt really exhausted too. It's hard, hard work. I really wanted time for myself, because I went from high school into Gossip Girl and it's a tough schedule that is 10 months out of the year and then on the breaks I would go shoot a movie. I never got that extended vacation, that moment after school or high school when you stop and say, 'OK, now what do I do?'"

It seemed inevitable that Lively would become an actress. Her father was an actor and her mother a talent scout. They would take her to acting classes that they taught when she was a child rather than employ a babysitter. All her siblings were in the entertainment industry. Her half-sister, Robyn, appeared in Doogie Howser, M.D. and Twin Peaks. Aged 10, Blake's father put her in his film Sandman. She was 16 when she won a role in the adaptation of Ann Brashares' novel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

But it was the show that she thought would definitely get cancelled when the network decided to screen it on Monday evenings that would make her the most recognisable member of her clan. Gossip Girl benefited from the nascent technology that allowed audiences to watch shows on demand and it became the first show in which a significant proportion of the audience would record it and watch at home at their own leisure on their set top boxes or via the internet. Bloggers rather than newspaper critics raved about the show and it quickly became a pop cultural phenomenon. Of course, it helped that the private lives of the cast were as interesting as those of the characters that they played. "We were all good friends and some of us dated people that were on the show," recalls Blake, who dated co-star Penn Badgley. "We wore similar clothes and walked out and about in Manhattan. I can understand why people confused us as people with the characters, we were young and living a pretty fabulous life."

The popularity also meant she was asked to endorse high-end brands. Gucci, L'Oréal and Chanel all employed her. The popular critical consensus soon became, merited or not, that Blake was more into the celebrity lifestyle than the craft of acting. Perhaps it's why critics seemed to have their claws out when she launched the Preserve website. "I always wanted to have a company where I could share artisans, designers and chefs from all over the world and it's what I do in my personal time. I'm always going to small interesting towns and finding the coolest furniture shops or designers and so it's sharing that on a bigger platform than I've done before."

The reviewers didn't share her passions, while also complaining about the user experience and layout. Again, Lively is pragmatic when assessing her own work. It was harder than she thought it would be. "It's one of those things where you would think if I could do this again, would I? Yes, I would, but I would do it very differently. What is it they say, hindsight is..."

Talk of the town: Blake Lively with her husband, Ryan Reynolds (AFP/Getty)

She pauses. And when I fill in 20/20. Lively recoils and says, "No. What is it that that NFL player said, hindsight is 50/50." A post-interview internet search shows the reference is to Carolina Panthers star Cam Newton, so perhaps Lively was wise to pause before referencing the quip. As she sagely adds, "I say that a lot now, just as a joke but if people don't get the reference they think I'm the one making the flub."

In a recent interview conducted by her brother, she said that the heart-wrenching prison drama The Shawshank Redemption was the film that made her laugh the most. "I was just ball-busting," she says when asked about the bizarre response. "That was a series of rapid-fire questions, if I had to answer in real life it would be Elf [a 2003 film about a man who is raised as an Elf]. I love Elf, I relate to him too much."

Her initial response was the cheeky answer. And you get the feeling that if irony worked on the page, all of her answers would be accompanied by a wink. "Oh, I'm very cheeky," she chimes. "People don't know that I'm cheeky. I just sound like a jerk because people would be, like, what an a-hole. She laughed at The Shawshank Redemption and she rubs truffles on her nipples for her baby. It's just like I joke with my husband. I'm saying the most absurd things and people take me really seriously. I must have some very flat delivery. But, yeah, I think I'm a lot cheekier than people realise."

The break has provided an opportunity to put down a demarcation line in her career. Her return to the screen in The Age of Adaline gives her an opportunity to deliver a melancholic performance that we've not seen from her before. There is a sadness to the fact that Adaline can't age, especially as her daughter, played by Ellen Burstyn, has aged. She can't have long-term romances as she doesn't want her secret out, casting her as some sort of freak show: "I think most actors dream of being in a period film and I not only got to be in a period film, but to be in a multi-period film. That's incredibly rare. Exploring what women were like in each of those different decades and trying to adopt certain mannerisms and speech habits and physicalities. That was really appealing as an actor. Just as a girl who appreciates design, I was incredibly excited about the wardrobe and the hair and the make-up for this film. Then working with Burstyn and Harrison Ford, I was the first person onto the project so I got to beg for the other actors."

She can't resist a quip about playing Burstyn's mother. "It was my dream as a child to play her mother. I read The Secret a lot and, whoop, it happened."

'The Age of Adaline' is released on 8 May