February 19, 2015
In The Mix

Bold Beauty

Adventurous on and off set, Hannah New is nearly as strong as her Black Sails alter-ego.

John Griffiths

Hannah New’s adventurous ways might well impress Long John Silver.

“I just got back from climbing Kilimanjaro,” she says blithely, as if she’d traversed the canned-soup aisle.

As Eleanor Guthrie on Starz’s Black Sails — a quasi–saloon owner with a yen for men, women and money — New is in the thick of the Caribbean-pirates-of-yore drama, now in its second season. “Eleanor’s so strong. She doesn’t let anything get in her way.”

New steers her life in similar fashion. Born in London the youngest of three girls (mom is an economist, dad a sculptor), she took to ballet as a tyke, then pursued acting as a teen.

She played Blanche in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at London’s National Youth Theatre and performed in Harold Pinter plays while majoring in English and Spanish at the University of Leeds. In 2013 she was cast as a Brit in a Spanish TV drama about the Franco era while studying Meisner technique — in Spanish — in Madrid.

Her big Hollywood break came on a sojourn to L.A., where she’d booked a J.J. Abrams pilot. The show wasn’t picked up, but it helped her land the role of kind Queen Leila in Maleficent. (Angelina Jolie, the film’s star and producer, “was so sweet and lovely to me. She’s got her eye on everything.”)

Next up: headlining as a traumatized stalking victim in the fact-based film Under the Bed.

Near the South Africa set of Black Sails, New surfs, mountain-bikes, rides horses — and doesn’t dread her shiver-me-timbers nude scenes.

“It’s always awkward, but it’s an adult show,” says the beauty with wavy blonde locks that do what they want. “Having a healthy attitude is important.”

Which she has in spades. “Staying conscientious and connected — that’s definitely my pot of gold.”

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