#Top 10 Restaurants in London

[chokhidhanilondon1]

A Guide to the Best Nice Restaurants in London: Indulge in Exquisite Dining

London is home to some of the world's finest restaurants, offering a diverse range of culinary experiences. Whether you're looking for Michelin-starred fine dining or a casual meal with friends, London has it all. From classic British cuisine to international dishes, London's restaurants cater to all tastes and budgets.

Nice Restaurants in London for a more casual dining experience, Chokhi Dhani offers delicious Indian food in a vibrant and lively atmosphere. No matter what type of cuisine or atmosphere you're looking for, London's restaurants are sure to satisfy your cravings and provide an unforgettable dining experience.

[chokhidhani3]

Here Are the Best Restaurants in London You Should Try

London is a food lover's paradise with a vast array of restaurants serving different cuisines from all over the world. From fine dining to casual eateries, London has something for every taste and budget. Here is a list of the Top 10 Restaurants in London that you don't want to miss.

Chokhi Dhani London Chokhi Dhani London is a cultural and culinary experience inspired by the vibrant and diverse Rajasthani culture of India. Located in Nine Elms Lane, Chokhi Dhani offers a range of authentic Rajasthani dishes, live entertainment, and traditional artisan crafts. The restaurant also features a wellness spa and a banquet hall for private events.

2. The Ledbury The Ledbury is a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of Notting Hill. The restaurant is famous for its modern European cuisine, with a focus on seasonal and local produce. The menu changes regularly, but you can expect dishes such as roast quail with black garlic and hay-roasted carrots.

3. Core by Clare Smyth Core is a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill, run by the award-winning chef Clare Smyth. The restaurant serves modern British cuisine, with a focus on using the best seasonal ingredients. The menu includes dishes such as Cornish turbot with kohlrabi and sea herbs.

4. Hakkasan Hakkasan is a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in Mayfair, serving modern Cantonese cuisine. The menu includes signature dishes such as Peking duck with caviar and crispy Szechuan beef. The restaurant also has an extensive cocktail list and a luxurious lounge area.

5. Sketch Sketch is a unique restaurant located in Mayfair that is famous for its quirky decor and artistic flair. The restaurant has five different rooms, each with its own distinctive design. The menu features modern European cuisine, and the afternoon tea is a must-try.

6. St. John St. John is a restaurant in Clerkenwell that is known for its nose-to-tail cooking and use of British ingredients. The menu includes dishes such as roasted bone marrow and parsley salad and braised rabbit with mustard and bacon.

7. The River Cafe The River Cafe is an iconic Italian restaurant in Hammersmith that has been a fixture of London's food scene for over 30 years. The restaurant serves simple, seasonal dishes such as grilled squid with chilli and parsley and pappardelle with slow-cooked beef.

8. Dishoom Dishoom is a popular Indian restaurant with multiple locations in London. The restaurant is famous for its modern twist on traditional Bombay cuisine, with dishes such as black daal and chicken ruby. The restaurant also has a great cocktail menu and a lively atmosphere.

9. The Wolseley The Wolseley is a grand European-style brasserie in Piccadilly that serves classic dishes such as Wiener Schnitzel and Beef Wellington. The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the afternoon tea is a must-try.

10. Lyle's Lyle's is a restaurant in Shoreditch that is known for its innovative and creative dishes. The menu changes daily, but you can expect dishes such as braised hare with beetroot and preserved blackcurrants and buttermilk pudding with poached quince.

London is a foodie's dream destination with a vast array of dining options. Whether you're in the mood for fine dining or casual eats, there's something for everyone. These top 10 restaurants in London are a great place to start your culinary adventure in this vibrant city.

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[travelbrighton]

London's Top 10 Restaurants: A Culinary Journey Through the City's Diverse Dining Scene

Indulge in the ultimate steakhouse experience at Hawksmoor in London, where prime cuts of meat, impeccable service, and a warm, inviting atmosphere combine to create an unforgettable dining experience for meat lovers and foodies alike. London is one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, and its dining scene reflects this diversity. From elegant Michelin-starred restaurants to trendy street…

[hikarry]

I imagine Crowley, in his long existence, has never ever even attempted to cook or bake something. After all, eating has always been an excuse to take Aziraphale out and hang out. And it's not even like he eats a lot. He clearly prefers drinking.

And yet, when they move to the South Downs, it's a bit different, innit? The South Downs is no London where in every corner there's a restaurant or a bakery and there's always a new spot to discover. If they want to eat out they have to drive for a while and it's not like they have a lot of options. All in all, it's just not very efficient. But Aziraphale likes food. And Crowley loves to watch him eat.

I have no doubt Crowley becomes the cook of the household, all for the love of the angel. And he also ends up liking it cause he likes to follow recipes and keeps his mind busy. Aziraphale's smile is just a bonus, really.

Alas, it takes a while for him to get good at it and the first time he tries can be described as one of the most frustrating ventures of his life.

At first he decides to wing it. Something simple, out of the stuff they have in the refrigerator and the pantry. How hard can it be? Humans have been doing it since de beginning of time! It turns out it can, indeed, be quite difficult. He burns everything, makes a mess of the kitchen. Somehow there's flour in the counter tops and he hasn't even touched the flour! Or was it sugar? Regardless, he didn't use sugar either!

He ends up caving in and pulling his phone, searching for EASY and BEGINNER FRIENDLY recipes. The angel doesn't need to know about it.

Welp, even following the recipe he ends up with his sleeves soaked with water, an egg on the floor, somehow the flour is back even tho he miracled it away 10 minutes ago and a burned hand, that he heals not before screaming bloody murder. Luckily Aziraphale wasn't at home.

Eventually, in between all his failed attempts, he starts running out of supplies and starts miracling them as he needs them.

After 3 hours, and 10 minutes before Aziraphale is due to arrive home, he is finally successful and extremely exhausted because of all the miracles.

When Aziraphale arrives, Crowley presents him with a somewhat fancy grilled cheese sandwich (yes. He started with proper meals and ended up in sandwiches).

"Oh dear, you made this?"

"Yup."

"I didn't know you could cook!"

"It's a sandwich, angel. Can't really be considered cooking."

They walk to the living room, when Crowley remembers you can see the kitchen from said living room, and it still looks like a war zone.

"It looks scrumptious, nonetheless!"

"Yeah, thanks." He snaps his fingers behind his back to tidy up the kitchen and close the window he had opened because of the smoke and the smell of burned food before they actually arrive in the living room. "Do you want some tea with that?"

"That would be lovely."

Okay, tea he could do in front of Aziraphale. Tea is easy. Just some warm water and leaves. He has done it a million times before for the angel. He can't fuck it up, right? After the most humiliating 3 hours of his life, he isn't so sure.

[alltoolewis]

cute ass italian date with Lewis trying to cheer reader up in monza

Our City of Love- Lewis Hamilton ✨

It's about time I start writing for this one again... Thank you so much for requesting lovely, this idea is perfection! Hope you enjoy & sorry for this being a little outdated I totally forget I wrote this I found it in my drafts (I love it so much for it to stay there!) I have slightly changed it a little for the plot, but I hope you still like it! 🤍

Summary: After you miss the Italian Grand Prix due to an unexpected illness, with a little help from the hotel staff, Lewis still makes it a trip to remember...

Since you were a little girl, you always dreamed of going to Italy... going to the fanciest restaurants to eat classic pizzas and pasta, walking around at night as the country goes to sleep only the lampposts lights guiding you through the dark night. But with your family income not affording vacations and your job not allowing you to travel when your friends did it never seemed possible... until you met Lewis.

You never told him about your dream to travel to the country, but he had an idea when he asked you if you would like to come with him to the Grand Prix, watching you break down in tears as you ran into his arms. At first, he was confused, not knowing why the question made you react that way, you had travelled with him on race weekends before in your relationship and although you had always been grateful you never burst into tears like right. But once you explained it all to him, he knew he had to make this trip 10x more special than any other trip you two went on.

"Calm down baby..." Lewis chuckled as you sat in your normal space on his jet, leg already bouncing up and down in excitement "We still have 10 hours to go.." But you didn't care how long the journey took, you were one step closer to living your dream "I'm sorry.." You sighed, trying your best to stop your fidgeting, glancing out the window as you began to move "I just can't believe it's actually happening... I'm actually going to Italy.."

Lewis watched you in awe as your head filled with a whole bunch of scenarios for the next 3 days, and although he wasn't physically in your head, he knew exactly what you were thinking about "You are, gorgeous..." He smiled, throwing an arm around you as your head fell on top of his shoulder "I'm sorry we can't stay for longer or have time to properly explore" With his busy schedule, it was clear that you wouldn't be able to live out your dream of exploring with him. He wished he didn't have to tell you that he had to fly straight back the day after the GP to duties in London but he had to... & although inside you were a little gutted the trip couldn't be longer and that the race was going to take up most of his time, you knew it wasn't his fault plus you loved watching him do his thing out there, so it was a win win .

"It doesn't matter Lew..." You sighed lovingly, moving your head slightly to put your forehead to his "You're taking me to my dream place, even if I spent a minute there it doesn't matter. as long as I'm with you."

Closing the small gap between you both, he placed his lips on yours immediately feeling the familiar eruption of butterflies that always happened... even after a year. "I love you so much (y/n) …" He breathed out, pulling away slightly as his forehead fell back on yours "You're way too precious for this world, please never change..."

"I love you too Lew..." You whispered like you didn't want to ruin the moment, tears brimming in your eyes "So fucking much."

-----------------------

The first day there was pretty much spent in the hotel room, you both being too exhausted to explore or check much of the track out after a long day of traveling, and with it being a race week Thursday a shit ton of press. "What a day..." Lewis groaned as he fell back in bed after leaving you for a couple of hours due to the conference "I'm sorry we couldn't-"

Shutting him up, you climbed on top of him placing your lips on his. Although you both lacked energies, you couldn't help but smile into the kiss "Can you stop apologizing." You giggled on his lips as you pulled away "We still have 3 days here, there's plenty of time to explore.."

"We're going to be at the track all the time." He groaned, still feeling guilty for 'ruining' the occasion with work.

"I'm still with you though.." You countered and attacked, leaving one last kiss on his lips before falling back to his side, resting on his bicep. Looking down at you with a smile, he sighed. He still never knew how one human being could be so caring, generous, and innocent. "Your incredible y'know?"

"I know." You smirked, fingers tracing over his tattooed chest that you loved almost as much as him "Thanks for the reminder handsome..."

Rolling his eyes, he pulled you closer to him allowing the exhaustion and tiredness in his body to relax upon yours "I can't wait for Saturday after quali... where I get to show you off to yet another country." Although you told him he didn't have to, Lewis planned to take you out on Saturday with it being the only day where it schedule wasn't as overwhelming as the others.

"Me too." You sighed, the scenario once again flooding your head "This trip is going to be one to remember." But you didn't know for what reason until the next day....

----

"Are you sure you're okay sweetheart?" Angela sighed as you sneezed yet again "You're looking a little pale..." Nodding your head slightly, you shot her a fake smile "I'm fine Ang... I promise just a little cold that's all.."

The truth was you weren't okay and deep down she knew that! You had for some reason woken up with a massive headache and a runny nose and although you insisted to Lewis that it was just the effects of jetlag, you knew it wasn't it, you just didn't want to ruin the weekend.

Giving you a unconvincing smile, Angela patted you on the shoulder "Okay Honey, if you need anything let me know."

"Thanks, Ang.." You smiled back trying to make it more convincing as you knew she was leaving to report back to Lewis. He tried his best to persuade you to stay at the hotel, explaining that you weren't going to miss anything important from practice and that you should just rest up, but that wasn't the girlfriend you are and he knew that! Since you started dating you made it adamant to him that if you were going to travel with him for a race you were going to be present for all of it... even the 'boring' parts! Despite the fact in moments like this your stubbornness was frustrating, he knew he was lucky to have you, not many other drivers could say the same about there partners... that's what you are so special!

The rest of the morning continued the same, you trying to put on a brave face in front of Lewis's colleagues as your body began to weaken. Lewis knew you were avoiding him on purpose as you avoided his gazes across the room and dodged his presence when he walked towards you. It’s not that you didn’t want to, you wanted nothing more than to fall into his arms to attempt to escape the aching feeling in your body but if you did you knew he'd see through your lies and send you back to hotel... ruining the evening and maybe even the weekend! The time struck 1pm & so far you were proud of yourself for avoiding your boyfriend for this long, but it wasn’t quite over yet! you knew that he won't have much time left to find you before his next practice session... or so you thought...

Just as you were about to walk back into the Mercedes lounge, an arm suddenly dragged you into one of the side rooms! You would have screamed if it wasn't for the familiar butterflies floating through your skin indicating that it was indeed your boyfriend's touch.

"Lewis..." You gasped, holding on to your chest "what the fuck!?! if you wanted a quickie you should have just said!" Your teasing normally caused him to crack a smile or laugh, but as he looked at you with a stern expression you knew he was being serious this time!

"Why aren't you telling me the truth?" He spoke with frustration, ignoring your comment as his eyes wandered over your pale skin.

"I-I don't know what y-your talking about L-Lew?" His stare made you stutter as he raised his eyebrow and like you said earlier he read straight pass your lie.

"Bull shit (y/n)… you might have been avoiding me all day but I can read you like a book! You are sick aren't you..."

"It's just the jet la-"

Interrupting you he placed the back of his hand against your forehead, heart dropping as he felt your temperature was through the roof. "Jet lag doesn't cause you to have the temperature of a desert baby.." He sighed, feeling a little guilty that he was the one keeping you from staying in "Why won't you let me take you back to the hotel?"

Your head dropped, as tears brimmed your eyes "I don't want to miss anything..." You whispered and for the first time that day your body allowed you to feel the full extent of your health as your head began to spin.

Taking your body into his, he lifted your chin up gently to look at him "You won't miss anything darling, I promise. I might be only racing for 10 minutes anyway, please let me take you back.."

This time you let the tears fall as you looked at him with soft eyes "I don't want to ruin it.."

"Oh, gorgeous..." He sighed, pulling you further into his chest as your tears soaked his shirt. He knew there was more to the story than just missing a practice session. Italy was your dream, and to think you weren't able to get the full experience due to a virus was not only killing you but also him! Holding on to your cheeks with both hands, his thumb wiped away the falling tears as best as he could "You are not ruining anything baby, you need to get better okay? so we can have that fancy date tomorrow..." He smiled, as your lips turned upwards slightly "So how about I take you back to the hotel so you can rest up, yeah? I can even put on practice for you on the TV so your not missing anything... although you won't.."

Although it killed you, you knew he was right. If you didn't rest now there was a possibility you wouldn't be able to do the rest of the weekend and that for sure would ruin it! So giving in to your boyfriend's pleads, you nodded "Okay..."

Pecking your temple gently, his lips tingled at the warmth "Right then gorgeous, let's get you back..."

"But what about practice?" You mumbled, as he wrapped an around you, guiding you out of the lounge "someone else should take me so you don't miss it..."

"Don't worry about that baby.." He smiled, rubbing his hand up your arm "I'll be back for when the cars ready, they'll understand..."

Not having the energy to reply or argue, you hummed. Allowing him to practically drag you out of the paddock and into the car park where his driver was surprisingly waiting for you both. As they began to drive off, you felt the exhaustion take over as you leaned closer into Lewis's arms. "I'm sorry..." You mumbled, taking Lewis by surprise as he looked at you confused "For what sweetheart?"

"For ruining it all..."

Placing his lips on your head, he sighed "You've got nothing to be sorry for baby, you haven't done anything wrong okay... let's just focus on getting you better, and then we can think of something to do about tomorrow okay?"

"Okay..." You hummed, throwing your head deeper into his chest "I love you so much, Lew" "I love you so much more (y/nn)" ---------------

Even after a lazy afternoon and night, allowing Lewis to look after you like an ill-struck child, you still woke feeling even worst. You didn't know what was wrong with you, but you knew it defiantly wasn't jetlag!

Lewis was already getting ready for the day when you had finally awakened. He already knew you weren't going to wake up feeling better when he felt your forehead this morning, your temperature still being up the roof. He didn't have the heart however to wake you up to check in properly, so instead he left a delicate peck on your cheek and had a cold flannel ready for when you did wake.

Noticing the light on in the bathroom you stood out of your warm bed to meet him in there, but as soon as your feet hit the ground your head went into overload. Stars gathered in your eyes as you reached for the back of the bed, hoping it would give you some sort of stability but unfortunately it didn't. Completely missing your bed, your body slipped onto the floor causing a light thud to echo around the room, gathering the attention of your boyfriend.

"(y/n)!" Lewis gasped as he popped his head out of the room, immediately running over to your sobbing body on the floor "what was you doing trying to get of bed, honey?"

"I wanted to get ready for today..." You sobbed, hiding your face in the palm of your hands causing Lewis's heart to break. He hated when you were sick, normally when you were upset, he would be able to help you feel better but when you were ill, he felt useless!

"(y/n)" Lewis sighed as he pulled your tired body into his "Shhhhh, c'mon baby, deep breathes for me..." He didn't really know what to say in moments like this, he wished he could somehow take the pain away or give an ounce of what you were feeling to himself, but he knew that wasn't just the problem.

Once you were calmer, he picked you up gently placing you back into bed. A small smile etching on his lips as your arms outstretched for him to join him. "I've ruined it all haven't I..." Your small voice broke the silence of the room, causing his heart to sink. Running his hands up your arms, he sighed placing a gentle kiss on your temple "No honey, of course, you haven't..."

"We had the whole day planned though..." You whimpered, tears brimming your eyes at the thought of how magical the day could have been if you didn't catch this dumb illness "I wanted to see you in qualifying, I wanted to be in your corner... I wanted to explore Italy with the love of my life!"

Hearing your voice crack at the end, Lewis pulled you tighter to him shaking his head slightly. He hated this... seeing you upset over something you had no control over at all! But all he could do is hold you, try and comfort you.

"Look, baby" He sighed, lifting your weaken body up slightly to bring you on top of him "I know this trip isn't going the way you wanted it to, and I hate the fact we can't do all of those things too, but that doesn't mean it is your fault" Your mouth opened to speak but Lewis was quick to silent you again "I know you're going to say it is but it is not! You didn't know you were going to get ill, did you?"

Not having the energy to speak, you shook your head wincing slightly at the shooting pain that suddenly emerged. "So, it's not your fault is it..." Lewis whispered, noticing your discomfort as he placed his lips on your temple, the warmth of his lips instantly settling the pain "Although there is nothing more, I want to do right now than whisk you around the city, I need you to get better honey... that's the most important thing..."

Despite knowing that there was no way you would be able to go on the date planned for tonight, hearing the words come out of his mouth only made your heart drop. Lewis felt the tears soak his fresh t-shirt as the reality came to light, and all he could do was hold you while your body grew tired, which didn't take long due to the circumstances.

"I love you so much" Lewis whispered as your body fell limp with sleep next to him "I promise I will still make this trip a rememberable one!" He knew you couldn't hear him, as a sniffled snore fell from your lips, but he still had to make the promise to you, even if you weren't conscious. The truth was he had no idea how he could make this better for you, he could try and win the race, and bring you home a fresh bunch of you of your favorite flowers, but none of them would bring you the same amount of joy as the date would have which killed him inside!

He didn't want to leave you as he slipped out of the bed, planting a final kiss on your heated forehead as he got ready for the day all of again. Changing his tear-soaked shirt into a new one, he left a fresh glass of water and a pack of painkillers on your bedside table just in case you woke up before he is back, which he highly doubted.

A million thoughts were slipping through his mind as he walked into the hotel lobby, stopping occasionally to greet fans and hotel staff. "Good luck with today, sir" the manager of the hotel smiled, giving him a shake of the hand "We hope that you are enjoying your stay with us & if there is anything we can provide you with please don't hesitate to ask"

Giving him a slight smile, he thanked him for his service apologising for not being to chat longer as he was already running a little late, but just as he was about to leave through the revolving doors a thought popped in his head causing him to holt.

"Actually, there is one thing that you could help me with..."

--------------

Qualifying went just the way Lewis hopped, despite being at the back of the grid anyway the car felt good enough to bring himself into the points for tomorrow's race. As they normally do, the interviews followed shortly after the session. Usually, Lewis would be focused during the questions, using multiple years of media training to give them well-thought-out questions but all he could think about when the cameras and microphones pointed at him this time was you!

Noticing his mind is somewhere else, Toto placed his hand on his shoulder "How about you get yourself back to her?" He smiled, already knowing what was going on. Raising his eyebrow slightly, Lewis shook his head, a frustrated sigh leaving his lips "I can't, I still have 2 more interviews after this..."

"Lewis!" Toto sternly interrupted, looking at his driver with nothing but seriousness "Go home to her, please... she needs you more than those interviewers do right now, you need her more than this, just go home!" Listening to his boss's words, he nodded, muttering a quick thank you before dashing out of the garage to get back to you. He felt guilty enough having to leave you the way you were this morning, so it was unsurprising that he'd take the first opportunity to leave the track and get back to you!

His hands shook with nerves as he finally reached the hotel door, not knowing what state you would be in or if you would have tried to pull the same stunt as this morning. But to his surprise and relief, you were in the exact same position he had left you in, tucked in bed with your head resting on his pillow, still sound asleep!

Moving quietly around the room in an attempt to not wake you, Lewis got changed out of his team clothes and into his comfy tracksuit, an outfit that was unfamiliar for him to the media but one that you knew all too well. Crawling in next to you, he gently moved your body close to him, kissing the top of your head repeatedly as a sigh of comfort left his lips.

"Lew..." You mumbled against his chest, not moving much from the pain and being trapped in his arms. "It's just me darling, go back to sleep, okay?" Not needing to hear him twice, you hummed in response, mumbling a quite 'okay' before going back to sleep.

Just as sleep almost took over him, his phone buzzed against the bed side table, causing him to groan....

'It should be ready for you in an hour or so, so please let yourself up past 7:30pm, it is yours for however long you need it'

Smiling to himself, he put his phone back down after setting an alarm for 6:45pm, pulling you back in closer than ever. "We've still got an hour I suppose..." He hummed to the silent room, knowing at this point he was more talking to himself than you, before he drifted off to sleep next to you.

--------

"(y/n) ..." Lewis whispered, guilt trickling in his voice as he woke you up from your long nap "You need to get up darling" Your eyes fluttered open, trying to adjust to the light and figure out why your boyfriend was trying to wake you up.

Noticing the strain in your eyes, he kissed along your face, starting off with your cheeks and lips, before heading to your nose and eventually your forehead just between your eyes "Open those gorgeous eyes for me, princess..." Not knowing if he had some sort of magic spell, your eyes fully opened, a tired sigh escaping your mouth as you looked at him in confusion "What's going on?" You mumbled, noticing he was now fully dressed in track pants and a cosy hoodie was wrapped around him, matching the one he had sitting patiently across his forearm.

"We're going out baby..." He smiled, helping you up gently as he began to get you dressed. Noticing the confusion on your face he added to his previous words "Only for some fresh air, we'll be back inside after 10 minutes, I just thought you might need it after being stuck inside for 2 days!"

Although you were still exhausted, the butterflies still fluttered the same at his warm gesture. "That sounds nice..." You smiled back, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, placing a warm kiss on his cheek "Your too good for me!"

"I think that's the other way round sweetheart!" He chuckled, grabbing your shoes from the side for you to step in. Noticing you were still a little unsteady on your feet, he picked you up bridal style, causing you to squeal "What are you doing?!"

"I'm carrying my princess..." He spoke so confidently as if it was the most normal thing. "I have got legs you know" Giving you a stern look, he shook his head, making his way out of the room and towards the lift "I don't want you passing out on me in the middle of the hotel, plus you barely weigh a thing, you near enough don't pass as a form of exercise!"

Knowing there was no way of winning with him, you got comfy in his arms, nuzzling your head deep into his neck as you sighed "Where is my prince charming taking me anyway..."

Pressing the button to the top floor, he laughed "Too the roof..."

"The roof!?!" You questioned, expecting to go to the front of the hotel "Why are we going up for there!"

"I told you beautiful, to get some air!" He laughed once more, placing your feet down as the elevator came to a stop "You lead the way darling, I'm right behind you..." With your feet feeling a bit steadier, you stepped out of the little box, eyes immediately going wide as you took in the scene in front of you!

The roof was laid out with blankets and pillows, rose petals scattered across the scene as candles lit up the roof. A two-seater couch was also placed behind it, as suggested by your boyfriend, as was a basket and tray of Italian snacks, another suggestion from the love of your life.

"Did you do this?" You gasped, tears gathering in your eyes as he wrapped his arms around you. "Sort of..." He chuckled, leaning his head on your shoulder to see a better view of your reaction "It was my idea, but the staff set it up for us... there the main ones to thank here, I just had the vision!"

"This is amazing Lewis!" You whispered, not trusting your voice as you turned around to hold him tighter "Your amazing! Thank you so much...."

A soft smile appeared on his lips as he clung on to you tight, feeling a rush of pride in himself for making you feel a sense of normality when you felt so awful. "That's not all though, turn around..."

Listening to his words, you spun around, mouth going wide as you took in the landscape in front of you, missing it the first time you had come up. The city lit up underneath you, as you had a clear vision of pretty much the whole place. The tears that were once gathered in your eyes now escaped as you gawked at the place you had dreamed so much of "It is so beautiful..."

"I know.." Lewis spoke confidently, eyes watching you instead of the city. His words caused you to blush as he pecked your cheek "I know it's not the same as exploring it, but I didn't want you to miss out on your dream..." Turning back around, you looked at him with nothing but love as he spoke so naturally from the heart "If I couldn't take you to the date, I thought I'd bring it to you! I know it's not the same-"

Cutting him off, with a kiss, you mumbled against his lips "It's perfect! It's everything I have ever dreamed of..." Not pulling away, he smiled against you "Our own city of love..." His words only causing you to smile even wider, as you pulled away caressing his cheek "Thank you for making my dreams come true!"

"Your very welcome!" He breathed out, voice full of love as he walked you towards the two-seater "What's the next dream of yours I can help you with.."

Leaning your head on his shoulder, you sighed "Spending the rest of my life by your side is my only dream from now on... being the love of your life!"

Carefully moving your head to look at him once more, he tilted your chin up allowing him to see the reflection in your love struck orbs

"That's not a dream baby doll.... it's reality!"

[aliteraryprincess]

top 5 places you've visited?

Thank you!

Haworth, UK - for the Brontë Parsonage Museum, of course. But also it's just a gorgeous place. I've been twice, and I hope I'll get to go back.

London, UK - my favorite city ever. It's the only big city in the world I truly like and enjoy walking around in. I could probably even live there despite always saying I would hate to live in a (real) city.

Spetses, Greece - our favorite part of our honeymoon. It's so gorgeous! Husband and I will be going back someday.

Charlottesville, Virginia - bit of a weird one here. But I went there for a conference and absolutely loved it! There are so many cute restaurants and cafes and a fantastic bookshop (that I bought waaaay too many books in). And the university is gorgeous. 10/10 would go back.

Athens, Greece - mainly because of the history. I'm not huge on cities generally (too crowded, too loud), but getting to see the Acropolis was amazing.

[andreabaideas]

Sam Claflin BEST on screen couples

Or... Where i make a list (no ratings) with the actresses that i've seen Sam have more believable chemistry with and look cute on screen, even if I think that he so good that he could act romantically with a flowerpot...

But i digress.

I included here also some info about the actresses (ages and heights) Last one because Sam is 1'80 (centimeters) and I personally like couples with a taller man and a shorter woman (typical I know, but hey, the heart loves what the heart loves...)

• Verónica Echegui :

-Seen together at : Book of Love ❤️

-Height: 1'77

-Age : 1983

I adore Verónica, I actually met her once in a restaurant with my family, she was super nice with us !

So i was greatly surprised to see her in a film with Sam. I love the Book of Love, it's super underrated, tbh. Their chemistry was on top and I liked their story too.

Also, go watch their interviews together, they were so cute. Sam trying to speak spanish Its adorable (he tries, he really does try). I leave the video link here :

• Lily Collins :

-Seen together at : Love , Rosie.

-Height : 1'65.

-Age: 1989.

I like Lily a lot, and I found her and Sam really cute at the movie and the interviews too. The chemistry was so strong , I liked them.

• Gemma Arterton :

-Seen together at : Their finest.

-Height : 1'70.

-Age: 1986

I adore Gemma Arterton, especially at Byzantium and Their finest. Their chemistry in that film was off charts, they were like an old couple marriage bickering, but i loved them.

I just wish the film ending was different (I wont spoil, but if you have seen It, you know what I mean).

• Emilia Clarke :

-Seen together at: Me before you.

-Height: 1'57.

-Age: 1986.

I like Emilia, and I found them amazing in that movie, I was devastated with It! I also found their reunion at the Dream It con at London super wholesome.

• Astrid Bergès-Frisbey

-Seen together at: Pirates of the Caribean: On stranger tides aka Pirates of the Caribean 4.

-Height: 1'71.

-Age : 1986.

I like Astrid a lot, she has an intriguing aura, she and Sam were the few good things about the movie , their ship was so cool. I liked them a lot!

• Stef Dawson

-Seen together at: Hunger Games saga Mockingjay I and Mockingjay II.

-Height : 1'55.

-Age : 1988.

I like Stef as Annie, she was cute and delicate, perfect for that character. They were amazing, in fact one of my otps. I live in the Au odesta universe with them fine and thriving (Still mad at Suzanne Collins) Au Its better than canon many times. For the few times that she appears on screen she ate and left no crumbs...And the chemistry was unmatched, I mean, have you seen their reunion at Mockingjay I??

And the wedding at Mockingjay II?? The looks at each other, the dance...

Just perfect. I love them!! ❤️

• Camila Morrone

-Seen together at : Daisy Jones and the Six.

-Height : 1'75

-Age: 1997.

Contrary to other people in DJATS fandom, I did like them together a lot. I think they had chemistry, a Sweet calm one, like the familiarity of a longtime couple, like highschool sweethearts. I loved them, tbh. The wedding was super cute!! You can ship what you want, but be objective , I mean...

How can you look at them and think they aren't cute, like how??!

• Riley Keough

-Seen together at: Daisy Jones and the Six.

-Height : 1'70.

-Age: 1989.

I love Riley, I love Sam, they were amazing together, their chemistry was magical, perfect, unmatched.

Their voices together were awesome , and they looked hot and cute too. Their kisses were spectacular. The Episode 10 (concert and backtage) was 🔥. I loved them ❤️. Their nominations were very deserved (they were very robbed 😡).

Also Riley and Sam on the videos and interviews are so chaotic besties , especially the TikTok... Toktik video and the cocktail or band interview ones were just XD.

That's it.

*Also thank you very much Pinterest© for the images and YouTube for the video.

[laurolive]

Top 10 Most Beautiful Linda Photos

Those 1970s pics in magazines of Linda sporting her unflattering “mullet shag” caused her to be unjustly labeled as too plain to befit a Beatle wife.

Now that we have a treasure trove of Linda photos thanks to the internet, we can see beyond that one phase of her looks. Linda had a natural unpretentious beauty. The pics prove it.

Linda at her loveliest

#10. 🤎

Mid-December 1969 Linda holds baby Mary with big sister Heather while on holiday in Antigua. Photo taken by Paul.

___________________________

#9. 💙

November 20, 1974 Linda performs with Wings on Top of The Pops, London. Photo by David Redfern.

___________________________

#8. 🩵

Date unknown, but I’m guessing 1968 or 1969 because she looks so young.

___________________________

#7. 💚

1970 with baby Mary

___________________________

#6. 💛

Date unknown, but I’m guessing 1968 or 1969 because she looks so young.

___________________________

#5. 💙

Jan. 1969, as seen in the 2021 documentary Get Back.

___________________________

#4. 🧡

c. 1976

___________________________

#3. 💜

February 13, 1969 at the launch party for Mary Hopkin’s debut album Postcard at the restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower in London. It was Paul and Linda’s first public appearance as a couple.

___________________________

#2. 🩷

Date unknown

___________________________

#1. ❤️

1969 Linda with baby Mary at High Park Farm, Scotland.

___________________________

Honourable Mentions

Date unknown, but I’m guessing 1968 or 1969 because she looks so young.

Jan. 1969 from the documentary Get Back, 2021.

Top left: Jan. 1969 from the documentary Get Back, 2021. Top right: 1968. Above: also 1968.

Feb. 10, 1983. With Michael Jackson at the BPI Awards (British Phonographic Industry Awards), London. (Another source says the date was Feb. 8, 1983.)

P.S. I kept finding more good pictures, so check this post for the extended list (#11 to #20) of top Linda pics.

P.P.S. And let’s not forget Linda glammed up: “Junior’s Farm” photo shoot 1974

The previous photos pretty much showed the natural Linda. However, being a member of a band, she was also a participant in professional photo shoots complete with makeup, hair, and wardrobe.

In this one, far from looking awkward in makeup and an evening gown, Linda nails the role as if to the manner born. She looks STUNNING. How is Paul not staring at her throughout the photo shoot? (Who knows? Maybe he was and the photographer had to do a lot of retakes.) 😊😍

1974 Photo shoot for cover sleeves of the songs “Junior’s Farm” and “Sally G” at Cromwell Mint Casino, London. Photos by Clive Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith said (of all the images he shot of Paul & Linda in costume with band mates, not just this set): “They really capture the seminal moments of the shoot… The fun we were all having, plus Paul and Linda’s closeness, it’s the naturalness of the pictures that is the key to their success.”

🥰

[mercurygray]

Hii Merc, could I please request #10 — emerald — for Eileen? Thank you <3

He had a 48 hour pass and an absolutely clear idea of how he was going to spend it.

The train from Swindon was a stretch, three hours at most, but Lew had a better chance of a decent meal in London, and a decent whisky, too, even with the rationing. He wanted to be in a city again - the lights and the buildings and the bustle. He'd had enough of small town living to last him quite a while, and army food wasn't ever anything anyone asked for by name.

Maxim's, or Claridge's? The Ritz? The Savoy? The possibilities seemed enormous. The Waldorf was the American outpost - perhaps he'd go there.

There was already a flurry of activity at the door, a crowd of servicemen and press types with cameras, clamoring a single name as they pushed and shoved for a better view of whichever celebrity they were anxious to see.

Lew joined the press, trying to actually reach the door for his own dinner, until he realized he knew the name - and the face that went with it.

"Miss Hammond! Miss Hammond! Miss Hammond!"

And there she was, in all her glory - Eileen Hammond. The last time he'd seen her she'd been sporting a t-shirt and shorts and a bloody nose courtesy of Herbert Sobel, but she was wearing nothing of the kind now - an emerald green suit with some kind of fur stole around her shoulders, topped off with a hat that gave slight shades of Robin Hood and Sherwood. An absolute vision, with no evidence, at least from this distance, that her nose had ever been broken or that she had ever been anything but perfectly coiffed and dressed.

She turned to the crowd, obviously practiced with this sort of thing. "Boys, boys, boys. I'm so sorry to disappoint you all but I've got a date waiting for me inside." She gave her biggest smile and glanced beneficently around the crowd, her eyes finding Nix and almost immediately lighting up, like she'd been expecting him. "Oh, Captain Nixon. There you are. Shall we?"

Nix could only mutely offer his arm, Eileen settling her gloves around it like she owned him and beaming to the crowd as she steered the two of them inside, past the doorman and the lobby clerk into the waiting eves of the hotel's restaurant entrance. God, he thought silently. That's an actress.

Once they were well and truly inside she let his arm go. "Well, there you are, Captain. Now you're the envy of every man in town." She gave a little laugh. "What, no free and easy quip? I think this is the first time I've seen Lewis Nixon without something to say."

It was true - he didn't have anything to say. For the first time in a long time, he was well and truly surprised - and, more than that, almost embarrassed. It had been one thing back at Toccoa to make a joke about what he'd do, given a hotel room and half a chance, but he didn't have that kind of power here. Here he was just another guy in a uniform, just like all the other guys out front, clamoring for her like she was a commodity on the exchange. She'd plucked him out, made him worth the attention, when usually it was the other way around, with him doing the plucking. He didn't have the same kind of power here that he usually did. "It may surprise you to hear that escorting movie starlets isn't my usual Friday."

Again that smile - she could blind people with it. "But I'm not just a movie starlet, am I? You could call me Private Hammond if you thought it would go down easier."

Lew thought mutely of Annie Sutton's steely glare and nearly winced. "It wouldn't." He swallowed, tried to gather up more of his customary charm. "So, how does this usually work? You pick some kid from the crowd, give his rank like you know him, and then bring him inside?"

She shook her head. "No. Usually I say I have someone waiting inside and then I eat dinner alone and sneak out the back. The staff here's nice for that."

Lew didn't have a quip for that - only an honest observation. "Sounds lonely."

"It is. But easier to manage."

It felt awkward, now - the honesty. He wasn't honest much, and then only with a very short list of people. The last woman he'd been honest with was - well, Joan. (Joan, who'd have a few words to say about chivalry and helping friends out of tight spots, who had a lot of stories herself about eating alone.) "Well, since I'm already here, it…seems a shame to waste it. Can a fellow treat you to dinner, Miss Hammond?"

He got an honest smile back. "I think he can."

[larakb117]

LONDON ADVENTURE

Joseph Quinn & female y/n

Summary: London Adventure is turning into New York Adventure…

Content Warning: fluff, rpf, implied smut

Part 10

The next morning you woke up, Joe sat next you in the bed, shirtless, with his phone in his hands. He clearly had already showered, there were some water drops all over his body, his hair was wet. “Hey.”, you said with a raspy voice. “What time is it?” He hadn´t recognized that you were awake, he almost threw his phone away on the night stand and turned to you. “Morning love.”, he smiled, his eyes were filled with adoration. “It´s almost 5 am.” He cupped your cheeks and kissed you softly. You slowly closed your eyes. Your breathe got a little heavier and you could feel your heartrate get higher, it was like your heart was nearly bursting out of you. Your hands wandered down his naked and wet upper body, they rested at his chest hair for a while, your fingers curled up in it a little. It was a long kiss. Once your lips separated he asked: “Do you want to go on sleeping or…?” “I think I slept enough, Joe.”, you chuckled. “You want to go and see the city a little bit?” “Oh, yes!”, you hastily kissed him again, sprung up from the bed and ran into the bathroom. “I´m taking a quick shower!”, you shouted out of the bathroom.

It had two separate sinks, a huge bathtub and was covered in white marble. You showered off the dirt from the 7 hour flight and many hours of waiting in line. “Damn.”, you thought, when you realised you did not bring any clothes in the bathroom. Then it came to your mind, that you wouldn´t need to worry about stepping out in the room naked. That was still new to you, but you were confident enough to do that. The last couple of days Joe had told you how beautiful you were hundreds of times. And you could feel that he really meant it, so you went out there without anything on. Joe stunningly stared at you: “Wow, love, you are just…Come here.”

After a short make out session (you came twice), you got dressed: Joe wore some grey trousers and a pinstriped shirt. It seemed like half of his wardrobe were pinstriped shirts. You decided to go for a simple white shirt and a leather jacket on top of some jeans. The jewellery you wore spiced up the outfit a bit more, Joe wore his chain and the rings as well.

At about 6 am you left the hotel. You took two different subway lines and went to Times Square 42 St. The moment you left the subway station you got to see Times Square right in front of you: Hundreds of billboards were in front of you, movie trailers, ads for various products, lit up signs for shops and restaurants everywhere around you. Suddenly you discovered Joe on of the billboards: “Oh my God!!There´s you, Joe!” “Yes.”, he blushed a bit. Joe had told you about the movie he was part of and which he was about to promote this week in New York. It was the first time you saw him in the costume and everything. You just knew the stuff he told you about so far. Pride started to grow in your chest. You grabbed his hand and squeezed it, while you watched the short trailer with a fascinated look. Then you turned around to look him in the eyes: “I´m really proud of you.”

After Times Square you took a taxi to Lower Manhattan for a long sunrise walk at Battery Park. You slowly started to get hungry, so you got some takeaway breakfast at a café and sat down at a bench with a view to Staten Island and the Liberty Statue. The Liberty was way smaller than you had expected, she was barely to see. You sat there for a while, the sun had already risen a few hour ago. “Love, will you join me at Jimmy Fallon tomorrow?”, Joe surprisingly asked. “What?”, you stared at him with an open mouth. “I´ll be at Jimmy Fallon tomorrow, do you want to come with me?” “Oh yes!!I love Jimmy Fallon!!!”, you lowkey freaked out. You could not believe you were sitting on a Bench in New York City and had the chance to see Jimmy Fallon live. Joe laughed: “Okay, we can go on top of the Rockefeller Centre together before we have to go to the studio, if you like to? So, don´t do that later when I´m at the Buzzfeed office, alright?”

You hastily nodded out of excitement and threw yourself at Joe. You tightly hugged him and wouldn’t let go. Joe stood up with you wrapped around his waist. He laughed, his laugh was perfect, it came right from his heart, it was a true and honest laugh. You just left some metres behind till you jumped off of him. Meanwhile it was 10 am, you sat down at a café to get some coffee and a snack.

Joe had to leave and get to the Buzzfeed Office near to Times Square, he had already texted Maddie that he would meet her there. It was a hard goodbye, even though you would see him again in a few hours, you would very much miss him. Joe told you to enjoy the city, he would call you as soon as he finished filming and doing interviews. The first thing you did was going to the Metropolitan Museum. The fashion exhibitions were the most exciting thing about the museum. After that you walked around Central Park, visited the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain and strolled around the Reservoir. A lot of pictures, selfies and google maps searches later your phones battery was about to die, so you decided to go back to the hotel. The moment you arrived at the hotel, Joe called you. You picked up the phone: “Yeah?” “I love, I just finished, where are you?” “I just arrived at the hotel. Are you coming?” “I´ll be there in twenty minutes, love.” He hung up.

Exactly 22 minutes later, the hotel room door opened and Joe came in. His eyes wided when he saw you laying on the bed: “Oh, I missed you so much.” He jumped up on the bed right next to you and grabbed your face to pull it close to him. “Hi, babe.”, you grinned. “How was your day?” “Pretty good, they let me play with puppies, that was cute. And I had to read some thirst tweets. Fans are begging BuzzFeed for two years now to make me do this video.”, he laughed and ran one hand through his hair. He looked incredibly good, that´s because you stared at him for a moment. You went in for a deep kiss.

“Love, I have a surprise for you.” Excitement rushed through you, you loved surprises. “You told me that you like musicals.”, he stopped. “Yes?” “I texted one of my friends who´s currently on Broadway and he put us on the guest list tonight.” “What?”, that was a thrilling surprise. “You tell me, I´m going to see a Broadway Musical?! At fucking Broadway?!”, you squeaked. “I love how excited you can get.”, Joe said with a loving undertone. “Who´s that friend? And what´s the musical?”, you asked while your hands tugged at his shirt. “It´s Gaten Matarazzo, I met him at the stranger things set.” “Oooh, he is Dustin!!!” “Yes. Gaten´s the best. Such a nice guy. He has some time after the Musical, so you can get to know him” “He´ll be the second friend of yours I get to know!”, you smiled, Joe hopefully did not think that you just wanted to meet Gaten because of his role in Stranger Things, you just wanted to meet all the people who were important in Joes life. “So tell me what´s the musical?”, you curiously asked again. “Sweeney Todd. You know that?” You squeaked again: “I love that musical! I was obsessed with the movie too!” You started to belt the song “Johanna”, but got in a fit of laughter after just a line of the song. Joe covered his face with a pillow. “Am I such a bad singer?”, still laughing, you knew that you were actually good at singing. Joe revealed his face, he was laughing too: “I just love how excited you are, love.”

To be continued…

[denimbex1986]

'In the autumn of 2021, Christopher Nolan knew just where to find Cillian Murphy. The director flew to Ireland with a document in his hand luggage, Hollywood’s equivalent of the nuclear football. It was a script for his top-secret new film, printed, apparently, on red paper. “Which is supposedly photocopy-proof,” Murphy explained. He wasn’t surprised by the in-person visit. The two had worked together on five previous films, and every Nolan script, Murphy said, had been dropped off by Nolan or one of his family members. “So, like, it’s been his mum who’s delivered the script to me before. Or his brother; he’ll go away and come back in three hours. Part of it has to do with keeping the story secret before it goes out. But part of it has to do with tradition. They’ve always done it this way, so why stop now? It does add a ritual to it, which I really appreciate. It suits me.”

Murphy met Nolan at his Dublin hotel room – and Nolan left him to read. He read and read and read. All 197 pages; the rarest kind of script, written in the first-person point of view of the film’s protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer. All action, all incidence, swirling around this character – a big-brained, psychologically complex giant of world history. Murphy had never played a lead in a Nolan film before, but had committed to this role as soon as Nolan told him about it, before he’d even seen a page of the script. “He’d already called me and said he wanted me to play the part. And I had said yes, because I always say yes to him.” The afternoon ran out. “And he doesn’t have a phone or anything,” Murphy said. “But he knew instinctively when to come back.” Nolan in command of time, as ever. They spent the rest of the evening together, and then Murphy took the DART train home, and got to work.

The result was one of the most watched and most acclaimed films of 2023 – a nearly billion-dollar blockbuster about a tormented genius (and, yes, the father of the atomic bomb). The performance affirmed for many what has been quietly known for some time: that Cillian Murphy is, or at least was, one of the most underrated actors in all of Hollywood. In small potent roles in those other Nolan movies. As a shapeshifting bit player and lead in dozens of films and plays over the past three decades. And, of course, across 10 years and six seasons of Peaky Blinders – the hit series that made him truly known globally. “Some years ago,” Christopher Nolan said, “I made what was probably a mistake in some moment of drunken sincerity of telling him he’s the best actor of his generation. And so now he gets to show that to the rest of the world so everybody can realise that.”

Part of the reason that Murphy still felt like something of a secret until recently is that he lives, breathes and resides at a remove from the noise. This is by design. In 2015, Murphy returned home to Ireland from London, already some distance from Hollywood proper, to a quiet hamlet on the Irish Sea – not exactly off the grid, but one ring further outside the blast radius of his industry.

One evening this winter, I took the DART down the coast from Dublin city centre to Monkstown to have dinner with Murphy. We met at a restaurant where, he told me, “I have a usual table, would you believe it?” He sat there comfortably for most of the night, bouncing, leaning forwards, his floppy rocker-dad hair swept casually across his forehead, his famously light eyes drawing in passersby like two pockets of quicksand.

Murphy and his wife of 20 years, artist Yvonne McGuinness, live by the sea with their two teenage sons. In Ireland, the abundance of their creative existence is all around them. The art galleries all seem to be filled with work by his family members. The music on the radio is curated by friends – or Murphy himself. There are occasional pints with his elder Irish actor idols, Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Rea.

Life here for Murphy is filled with, well, life. His boys are approaching exit velocity. There are exams. Chores. Errands. He and his youngest were flying out in the morning to attend a football match in Liverpool. “I would’ve taken you elsewhere for some Guinness,” Murphy said, “except I have to drive to drop my boy off at a party tonight.” The brand of busyness felt quite far from the bubbles that typically cocoon the leading men in the film industry.

“I have a couple of friends who are actors, but a majority of them are not,” Murphy said. “The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just fucking living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions… I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?”

Cillian Murphy, at least on that weekend last winter, seemed to me to have something so deeply figured out that I spent the month after our time together unable to shake the experience of being in the presence of someone living so much the way that so many other actors – so many artists, so many people – claim to want to live. Away from it all, but in highest demand. Delivering Oscar-worthy performances while also seeming convincingly content to disappear for a long while, at any point, no questions. The stabilising forces at home seemed to work as an anchor point from which Murphy could go off and wander as an artist. “He has this rare blend of humility with this supercharge of creativity,” Emily Blunt said. “He’s just a lovely, sane person. He’s so, so sane. And yet he’s got such wildness in him in the parts that he’s able to play.”

He was the first of his friends to have kids, and thus will be the first with an empty nest. More time for films. (Maybe.) More time for music. (Certainly.) More time to go on runs at night, when the lights streaking by make him feel like he’s going faster. Even more time for sleep: “I sleep a lot. I do 10-hour sleeps.” He seemed immune to the need to be in the mix – of fame, of fashion, of free dinners, the titillating offerings of a scene. A lot of actors age out of that compulsion, but the thing is, Murphy’s not old. Forty-seven. At the height of his powers, entering his prime. Not exiting the industry, but just floating lightly beside it until called upon, which he often is, and will be more now than ever.

He tries to do one movie a year, preferably not in the summer, when he likes to spend most of his time on the west coast of Ireland, doing nothing much but finding new music for his radio programme on BBC Radio 6 Music or walking his black Lab, Scout. He is perfectly happy to be “unemployed” while he waits for the right new film to come his way. “There could’ve been a situation when Chris called me up that I was doing something else,” he said. “And that would’ve been the worst of all scenarios.”

In this way, Murphy seems to adhere to his version of Michael Pollan’s adage about healthy eating: “Make movies. Not too many. Mostly with Christopher Nolan.” Imagine the discipline, the confidence, the peace of mind, to not worry about missing an opportunity, a lunch, a party, a fork in the road back in one of the frothier Hollywood hubs, but rather to stroll along emerald shores, as the days stretch out until 10pm, knowing that they know you – and that, ultimately, they know where to find you.

In Monkstown. Probably at his table. Looking present. Clear-eyed. Like any local, but with more moisture in his skin. At dinner, he asked me just once not to put something in the piece: a nuanced take he shared on a local establishment. Nothing so dangerous as an unwelcome opinion in a small town. No truer sign of someone “just fucking living” there. The dream.

Nolan had first seen Murphy in 2003, in a promotional image for 28 Days Later that had run in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was looking to cast Batman, looking for some actors to screen test, and I was just very struck by his eyes, his appearance, everything about him – wanted to find out more,” Nolan told me. “When I met him, he didn’t strike me as necessarily right for Batman. But there was just a vibe – there are people you meet in your life who you just want to stay connected with, work with; you try to find ways to create together.” So Nolan put him on camera just to see what happened. “He first performed as Bruce Wayne, and I saw the crew stop and pay attention in a way that I had never seen before, and really have never seen since. And it was this electricity just coming off the guy, it was an incredible energy. And so I called some executives, and they were impressed enough with him that they let me cast him as Scarecrow. Those Batman villains at the time had only ever been played by huge stars – Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it’s just a testament to his raw talent.”

Batman Begins was the first of his smaller roles in Nolan’s three Batman movies, Inception, and Dunkirk. “I hope he won’t mind me saying, but when I first worked with him, he was all pure instinct, and the technical side of acting wasn’t something that had registered as important with him. We would literally put a mark down and he would just walk right over it,” Nolan said, laughing. But over two decades, “as I saw him develop his technical facility, it did not in any way distract or diminish the instinctive nature of his performance.”

For the lead in Oppenheimer, Murphy prepared at home for six months, focusing first on the voice and the silhouette (in other words, shedding weight to reflect the skin and bones of a world-renowned physicist who subsisted primarily on martinis and cigarettes during his years developing the bomb). On set, as the days of filming wore on in the New Mexico desert, the significance of what Murphy was up to started to spread across the set among the cast and crew “like a rumour,” Nolan said. “I remember the same thing with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.”

Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s beleaguered wife, Kitty, first got to know Murphy well on A Quiet Place Part II. “Cillian’s really kidnapping to be in a scene with. He pulls you into this vibrational vortex,” she told me. “He loves a party. But when he’s working, he’s intensely focused, and won’t socialise very much at all. Certainly not on Oppenheimer; I mean, he didn’t have anything left in the tank to say one word to someone at the end of the day.”

Matt Damon told me that when they were shooting out in the middle of New Mexico, he and Blunt and the rest of the cast would go down and eat at this one little café. “It was like a mess tent,” he said. “And Cillian was invited every night, but never made it once.”

Murphy was back in his room, preserving his energy, prepping for the next day, minding the Oppenheimer silhouette.

“OK, he’s losing weight, he can’t eat at night, you know he’s miserable,” Damon said. “But you know he’s doing what’s best for the movie that you all want to be as good as possible, and so you’re cheering him on. But at dinner you’re sitting there and you’re all shaking your heads, going, ‘Man, this is brutal.’

“The one thing that he would allow himself, his one luxury, is that he would take a bath at night. I mean he would allow himself literally a few almonds or something. And then sit in his bath with his script and just work. By himself, every night.”

The performance is so big, but so much of it is invisible to the audience, in the concentrated intensity of the interpretation. The nucleus towards which so many elements subtly draw us, closer to his character. Just one example: if it were period-accurate, Murphy said, everyone would be smoking and wearing hats, but he’s the only one doing either: “It’s emphatic, but subliminally so.” The author Kai Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the monumental biography of Oppenheimer on which the film is based, spent a day at the Los Alamos set, watching Murphy play the scene where Oppenheimer talks to his team of scientists about the bomb while someone drops marbles into a fishbowl and a brandy glass. “At one point during a break, he approached wearing his baggy brown suit and turquoise belt, and I raised my arms and shouted, ‘Dr Oppenheimer, Dr Oppenheimer, I’ve been waiting decades to meet you!’ ” Bird said. “He especially captured the voice and Oppie’s intensity.” (At one point during our conversation, Bird asked me to confirm: “Those are his blue eyes, right? Or is he wearing lenses?”)

The film was released on Barbenheimer weekend, just after the SAG-AFTRA strike began, and despite enjoying some lighter time with Blunt, Damon and the cast, Murphy was relieved to cut short the promotion of the film. “I think it’s a broken model,” he said of red carpet interviews and junkets. Outdated and a drag for actors. “The model is – everybody is so bored.” Look what happened when they went on strike, he said. It all stopped. But the fact that the film was good, and Barbie was good, two at the same time, with people going crazy – it just shows you don’t need it. “Same was the case with Peaky Blinders. The first three seasons, there was no advertising, a tiny show on BBC Two. It just caught fire because people talked to each other about it.”

Murphy’s reticence in many interviews is palpable. “It’s like Joanne Woodward said,” he told me. “ ‘Acting is like sex – do it, don’t talk about it.’ ” Although I wouldn’t characterise his disposition on, say, late-night TV as gruff, he’s basically just incapable of going full phoney. He is, in other words, reacting the same way you might to being asked the same question for the hundredth time in a week. I’m curious to watch him suffer through his first Oscar campaign, where answering the same questions about his performance is essentially the point, for several months.

“People always used to say to me, ‘He has reservations’ or ‘He’s a difficult interviewee,’ ” Murphy said. “Not really! I love talking about work, about art. What I struggle with, and find unnecessary and unhelpful about what I want to do, is: ‘Tell me about yourself…’ ”

Nonetheless: He grew up in Cork. Went to a Catholic school better suited for a certain kind of athletic boy than an artistic soul. “I always fucking hated team sports. I like watching them. But I was terrible at them,” he said. That classic system for schooling was not good for him, “emotionally and psychologically,” he said. “But at least it gave me something to push against.”

Murphy played in a successful band with his brother, half-heartedly entered the local university as a law student. While at school in Cork, he stumbled into a performance of A Clockwork Orange and fell in with the stage scene there. He hadn’t trained in any way, but he got the first role he ever auditioned for, in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, which travelled around the UK, Europe and Canada, and transformed his life. “It all happened to me in one month, in August ’96: we got offered a record deal, I failed my law exams, I got the part in Disco Pigs, and I met my wife,” he said. “I now look back and go, Oh, shit, I didn’t know then how important all these things were – the sort of domino effect that they would have on my life.” I asked Murphy, who has said in the past that he identifies as an atheist, if such a confluence ever made him wonder if there was indeed a higher power organising all of this. “Ohhh,” he said. “I love the chaos and the randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.”

That winter weekend, while walking around Dublin on a bit of a Joycean ramble, we passed a bookshop. “This was my favourite bookshop when I first moved up to Dublin. I didn’t have any money and I was living with my mother-in-law. And I would come in here and get a coffee for 50p, but then they would, like, refill it, you know? So, I’d sit in there all day and just read plays and then put them back on the shelves, and then go home and my mother-in-law would feed me dinner,” he said. “Just to educate myself. To catch up. ’Cause I didn’t go to drama school, so I’d read all the plays I should’ve read if I went to drama school. I’d ask all these writers and directors to tell me all the plays that I must read.”

“Theatre is the key to Cillian,” director Danny Boyle told me. “Weirdly, given that he is such an extraordinary film actor.” It’s the ability, from the theatre, to travel the great distance of an extreme character arc. “Everybody talks about his dreamy Paul Newman eyes. And all that’s to his advantage, of course, because behind is this capacity, this reach that he has into volcanic energy.” (The other key to Cillian, Boyle said, is that he’s a bloody Irishman: “He’s one of the great, great exports, and the homeland clearly nourishes him constantly.”) Boyle cast Murphy in 2002’s 28 Days Later, the first film of Murphy’s that made him known. It led, in its way, to the Nolan partnership, as well to working with Boyle again on 2007’s Sunshine. “When we did 28 Days Later, he was really just starting off,” Boyle said. “By the time he came back for Sunshine, he was a seriously accomplished actor.”

In the noughties, Murphy was working frequently. Some of the movies were better than others. “Many of my films I haven’t seen,” he said. “I know that Johnny Depp would always say that, but it’s actually true. Generally the ones I haven’t seen are the ones I hear are not good.”

I asked him if he’d seen Oppenheimer.

“Yes, I’ve seen Oppenheimer…” he said, rolling his eyes.

When Nolan finished the film, Murphy, his wife and his younger son flew to Los Angeles to watch it for the first time in Nolan’s private screening room. “It’s pretty nice…” Murphy said, trying to balance obvious enthusiasm with not giving too much away. “You know, he shows film prints there. The sound is extraordinary.” How many seats? “Uh, I’d say maybe 50?” So, Murphy did see this film of his – in perhaps the most dialled-in home cinema known to man.

In the summer of 2005, just a couple of months after Batman Begins came out, Murphy was back in cinemas with Wes Craven’s Red Eye. It was villain season. And the two roles, in close quarters, seemed to coalesce around a feeling: that guy creeps me out. When casually canvassing people about what they think of when they think of Murphy, I was shocked by the imprint that Red Eye had on an American of a certain age.

“Oh, I know, it’s crazy!” Murphy said. “I think it’s the duality of it. It’s why I wanted to play it. That two thing. The nice guy and the bad guy in one. The only reason it appealed to me is you could do that –” he snapped his fingers “– that turn, you know?”

“They say the nicest people sometimes make the best villains,” Rachel McAdams said, recalling her time with Murphy on the cramped aeroplane set of Red Eye. “We’d listen to music and gab away while doing the crossword puzzle, which he brought every day and would graciously let me chime in on... I think the number one question I got about Cillian way back then was whether or not he wore contact lenses.”

“I love Rachel McAdams and we had fun making it,” Murphy said. “But I don’t think it’s a good movie. It’s a good B movie.”

During that same stretch, Murphy starred in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, one of the best films he’s made, and one that Murphy is uniquely proud of. It’s a period epic that tells the story of a crew of Irish friends who find themselves fighting first the British, in the Irish War of Independence, and then one another in the Irish Civil War. The film is lush, harrowing, relentless and transporting. Murphy has a face that sits cosily at home in any decade of the 20th century. He is at his most vital in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s – and that’s one of the factors that works so convincingly in Oppenheimer. Matt Damon, for better or worse, looks like Matt Damon. Emily Blunt, again for better or worse, looks like Emily Blunt. Whereas Cillian Murphy looks like a scientist from 1945.

Murphy and his filmmakers have run this play several ways in recent years. In Anthropoid (2016), as a Czechoslovakian resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Prague. In Free Fire (2016), as an IRA member caught up in an arms deal gone horribly wrong. In Dunkirk (2017), as a British “shivering soldier” suffering from PTSD. And, of course, in Peaky Blinders (2013–2022), as a First World War hero turned gangster in 1920s Birmingham. With that face, he can play every side of the die of the embroiled conflicts of pre- and post-war Europe. “Cillian’s always laughing about how he’s perpetually playing people who are traumatised,” Blunt said. “There must be something about his face that sort of entices those kinds of offers.”

In the first frame of Anthropoid that Murphy appears in, a moonbeam strikes his cheekbone like it’s a plane of alabaster, and the question immediately pops to mind: are you a Nazi or the resistance? Are you the good guy or the bad guy – or both, that “two thing”? The stable and the wild. The duality. The pull within.

In Dublin, we found ourselves walking through busy streets, beneath abundant winter sunshine and caustic seagulls. We were approached by fans at a shocking clip – but also by sisters of friends.

“I’m not a stalker…” one said, politely.

“Oh, hi, Oona!”

I asked him if he’d sensed that his life had palpably changed in any way since last summer, given that a billion pounds’ worth of people saw him in practically every frame of one of the biggest films of all time. “To me, it always seems to go in waves,” he said. “When Peaky was at its kind of apex, you’d feel a different energy around, walking around, a little bit like I do now – but then it settles down again. It kind of comes in waves. And then you don’t have something in the cinema for ages, and people forget about it. So. It seems to be like that, and you sort of ride that, and then things go back to normal.”

With all due respect to the Peaky hive, this film did seem to go especially wide.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “But you’d be surprised. Peaky is still the thing I get asked most about in the world.”

As if on cue, Murphy was approached by a fan on the street, who asked for a photo.

“Oh, I don’t do photos,” he said to the disappointed lad, who nonetheless got 20 seconds of Murphy’s time to chat.

“Once I started doing that,” he said, “it changed my life. I just think it’s better to say hello, and have a little conversation. I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, I feel so bad. But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”

“There is a culty, effervescent kind of wonder about Cillian,” said Blunt. “I think for someone as interior as he is, this level of kinetic fame is, like, horrifying for him. If anyone is not built for fame, it’s Cillian.”

To make it up to that fan, I asked Murphy what the status is of a potential Peaky Blinders film. “There is no status, as of now,” he says. “So I have no update. But I’ve always said I’m open to it if there’s more story. I do love how the show ended. And I love the ambiguity of it. And I’m really proud of what we did. But I’m always open to a good script.”

We passed some young people in dark dresses and heels, absolutely the worse for wear. “Look at these guys, out from the night before,” Murphy said, smiling. I asked him if he had his days of partying in Dublin, in London. “I mean, I did, but it was with my friends. I was never part of any scene – or went to, like, acting clubs. I would never go to the premiere... The idea of going to a premiere that isn’t your own, seems to me like…”

We passed Trinity College, an occasion to discuss the breakout Irish series Normal People and its breakout Irish star Paul Mescal. “He is the real deal. He is like a true movie star. They don’t come along that often. But,” Murphy said, serving the lightest and rarest touch of pride and swagger, “luckily, they seem mostly to come from Ireland.

“It’s a good time,” he added, “to be an Irish actor, it seems.”

We stopped in at the Kerlin Gallery to see the show of his sister-in-law, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. She and Murphy’s wife were friends in graduate school in London, and Murphy’s brother met her while visiting Cillian there. This is his scene. He walked around admiring the pieces, which he’d heard about at family functions but not yet seen in person.

“Now this work immediately appeals to me,” he said, “because you can feel it’s pushing at big, big themes, and to me, that’s what I’ve always loved. I don’t really go for pure entertainment. I love when it makes you feel a little bit fucked up. Not in a horror-genre way, but in a psychological, existential way. That’s what I love in all the work that I enjoy and the work that I try to make.”

Murphy executive-produced the last three seasons of Peaky Blinders, but had been looking for a first film to produce. He secured the rights to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a Booker Prize finalist, and one night on the set of Oppenheimer, while they were just sitting there in the desert, Damon told him about Damon and Ben Affleck’s then unannounced new company, Artists Equity, whose novel financial model is based on profit sharing with the crew. Murphy sent them the book and Artists Equity ultimately financed the film. “Normally, you’re trying to put together all these different entities, and then you have all these points of view on the edit,” Murphy said. “This was just those guys.”

Small Things Like These centres on an average man about Murphy’s age in a small town in County Wexford, who, one Christmas, stumbles upon a horrifying secret in the local convent – the Magdalene Laundries, which from the 18th century to the 1990s held thousands of girls and women prisoner in Church workhouses. I asked Murphy if, with his new power, it was important to him to tell Irish stories. Not especially, he said. The only criterion was: what’s the best story for right now? “Still,” he said, “it’s a good time to be looking at that story, because we have distance from what happened with the Church and everything. But yet I don’t think we’ve still fully addressed it. So, if you can make something that’s entertaining and moving, but also asks a few questions about who we are as a nation, and who we were as a nation, and how far we’ve come – then that’s great. But, again, they should happen after you’ve gone and had a reasonably entertaining evening at the cinema.”

Murphy joked at one point that he spent the actors’ strike at home “eating cheese,” but what he really did was spend the strike editing Small Things and overseeing “all the lovely stuff that we actors never get a look in on.” (His production company, Big Things Films, would’ve been called Small Things Films, he said, except that Small Things suggests “a lack of ambition, perhaps.”) Small Things will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this month.

One film a year, control, restraint, a hand firmly on the wheel.

Murphy has a natural propensity to an analogue lifestyle that works well with Nolan, who doesn’t use email or have a smartphone. “I aspire to that life,” Murphy said. “I was just clearing stuff off my phone, but have to keep the apps for music and music discovery.

“I still have all my CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays,” he went on. “I cannot get rid of them. I did get rid of my VHS, though. I just left them on the street because nobody wanted them. I went and brought them to a library and was like, Look at this pretentious collection of art films! and they were like, No thanks, man…”

I asked him if he saw the viral TikTok of Nolan showing a zoomer how best to project Oppenheimer. He started laughing. “My son showed me that. A clash of cultures.”

Working with Nolan can feel like a much-desired retrenchment from modern life. “When I’m on a Chris set, it does feel a little bit like a private, intimate laboratory,” Murphy said. “Even though he works at a tremendous pace, there’s always room for curiosity and finding things out, and that’s what making art should be about, you know? There’s no phones – but also no announcement: everybody just knows. And there’s no chairs. Because he doesn’t sit down. Sometimes a film set can be like a picnic. Everyone’s got their chairs and their snacks and everyone’s texting and showing each other fucking, you know, emojis or whatever, memes – which I do know,” he said, referring obliquely to the meme of Cillian Murphy not knowing what a meme is. “But why?”

Do you know what Nolan is doing next? I asked him.

“Nooo. But, like, I didn’t know that he was writing Oppenheimer. We don’t stay in touch that way.”

It’s like Mission: Impossible. Do the hard thing together, then sever communication. “Chris is the smartest person I’ve ever met,” added Murphy. “Not just the director stuff, but everything else.”

Nolan had told me that he’d wanted to give Murphy the role that he would be dogged by forever – that he would spend the rest of his career trying to crawl out from under. “And,” he said, “I think I’ve done it.”

When I put it to Murphy, he took a beat: “There’s a big, big body of work that I think people that know know.” I think it was his modest way of saying: I’ve got a few others too.

Murphy told me he’d heard that “one of the Sydneys” – Lumet or Pollack – once said that it takes 30 years to make an actor. He believed that. “I’m 27 years,” he said. “So I’m close.”

After Nolan hand-delivered the Oppenheimer script to Murphy and left him to read in that Dublin hotel room, he made his way to the Hugh Lane Gallery, and, more specifically, to the Francis Bacon studio there, a perfect preservation of the impossibly messy London studio where the Irish-born painter had lived and worked for much of his life. Murphy and Nolan share a love of Bacon – a towering figure of the 20th century, born in its first decade, dead in its last. Besides the reassembled studio, the museum has several paintings by Bacon – some finished, some unfinished. In all instances, though, the portraits of people – ghoulishly distorted figures – are rendered unsparingly. Never perfect representations. Never straight impressions. But rather an artist’s interpretation of another being, reconfigured into a stark image. You can see what might appeal to both a director of a biopic and his leading man.

That winter weekend, I made the same journey across the River Liffey that Nolan did, past a poster for Oppenheimer in a Tower Records window, past the Garden of Remembrance (for all who gave their lives for Irish freedom), and met Murphy at the museum. He had on a black puffer jacket, a black hoodie, and a pair of black Ray-Bans with that starburst that movie-star lenses do when subjected to a flash on a red carpet. He removed them inside and took the well-worn path back to the Bacons. “Most people don’t know about this place,” he said. “It’s kind of like a little secret. But I just come here when I have time to spare in town.”

We looked at Bacons. Bacons everywhere. We talked about the Bacon biography that came out in 2021. “I love the work,” Murphy said, “but just the life. That kind of unique relentlessness that he had as an artist.” I asked if he read actor biographies. “When I was starting out,” he said. “I always worry, though, reading them – because I can’t remember what I did last week... I often wonder about the self-mythologising.”

We peered in on the studio itself, every cigarette butt and crate of champagne archived and put in its place. “Chaos for me breeds images,” Bacon had said.

Do you have a room in your house that looks like this? I asked.

Murphy laughed. “No, I do have a man room, a man cave. But it’s incredibly tidy.”

In another room of the museum, we sat before a looped TV special on Bacon from 1985, an hour-long interview with presenter Melvyn Bragg, where the great painter spits off charisma and wisdom in pithy responses to the biggest questions an artist can be asked, all while wearing a perfect black leather jacket. We sat there quietly together, until Murphy interjected: “It’s kind of mesmerising, isn’t it?”

Before I’d arrived in Dublin, Nolan had told me that Murphy’s career tends to make sense if you think of him more as an artist than an actor – as you would a painter or a musician. That his filmography isn’t a line going up or down so much as filled with distinct periods of development. It helps explain the approach to the work. How patient and restrained. How clear the point of view. An act of accretion rather than explosiveness and volatility. So unshaken by the things that rock the boat for so many actors. It’s the clarity. The authenticity. The answer to the question: when you’re tested again and again, what is there? Who is there? Here is a man – a 47-year-old who could play 27 with the right light and 67 with the right make-up – who is probably going to win the Oscar for best actor, but whose mind couldn’t be farther from the chatter of his industry and the noise, the noise. At one point, I asked him if he feels like he’s uniquely well-positioned to play roles of middle age – if Oppenheimer feels like the first film of what could be the strongest stretch of his career.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I really haven’t thought about it.”

Here, then, was another thing Murphy had seemingly figured out – consciously or not. Almost all religions, coaches, gurus, and enlightened friends tend to offer the same advice: don’t lose yourself in the past, don’t fixate on the future, but focus six inches in front of your nose, and on the Now that you can control. “I really am kind of like, pathologically unsentimental about things,” Murphy said. “I just move forward very quickly.” The past wasn’t a problem because he couldn’t remember it – or wouldn’t romanticise it. The future wasn’t a concern because he didn’t like to plan too far out. And so: the one film on the horizon; the one song on the radio or the one painting on the wall. He was, in this way, an authentic presentist. Or, less abstractly, just a good listener, a good seer, a good scene partner, a good person to have dinner with.

There, in the museum, we sat and we sat, watching the Bacon interview as though there was nowhere else to be (because there really wasn’t) and nothing else to think about (what more was there than how an artist’s life might be lived?).

Murphy broke the silence. “Did you ever hear this theory that [Brian] Eno has? About the farmers and the cowboys? There’s two types of artist – there’s the farmers and the cowboys. The farmers, like in his studio for example,” he said, gesturing to Bacon on the screen. “He’s mostly kind of doing the same thing, refining and refining and refining the same thing. And the cowboys, who go off, they’re like prospectors, that go off and do mad work. Eno puts himself in the second bracket, ’cause he’s such an innovator, with the music and the production and all of that. Or somebody like Bowie, constantly reinventing. Neither one is better, it’s just a different way of making work.”

Which do you fall into? I asked.

“Definitely the cowboy, I think. But there are actors that just play similar parts, versions of themselves all the time. Again, I don’t think either one is better.”

Do you think that sometimes an actor falls into the other category by accident, when their public persona intersects with – or eclipses – the work? I asked.

“Perhaps. Yeah. I’m sure that’s the case. Yeah.”

He sat back and sank into the film again, giggling at some of the things that Bacon said and did. “There’s a few things he says that I always think apply to our work,” he said. “ ‘The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.’ ” Provocative movies. Provocative performances. No easy answers – but perhaps a few new questions.

Don’t give it all away. Don’t even give most of it away. Retrench. Be clear. With yourself, but not necessarily with others. Let the fame wave pass. Live by the sea.

He said it again: “Deepen the mystery. That’s it, isn’t it?”'

[celebritieswithemmab]

What is Robert Pattinsons "Little Pillow"?

Photo from MEL

And, most importantly, how did Robert Pattinson attempt to monetize it?

In the midst of lock-down, when nobody (including celebrities) had anything to do, Robert Pattinson was stranded with nothing but three t-shirts and access to a little corner store. He was supposed to be temporarily staying in a London flat during the filming of Batman, which he starred in (as Batman). Yet in the wake of COVID-19 closures across the globe, he had been stranded with little food other than what the producers would send him according to his regulated Batman diet. Attempting to make productive use of his time, Pattinson decided to try a business concept he had come up with the prior year. He had recognized a gap in the market for fast-food pasta, and says that he “...was trying to figure out how to capitalize in this area of the market, and [he] was trying to think: How do you make a pasta which you can hold in your hand?” Let's not speculate on if this question should ever be answered, or the grammar in which it was asked. Because Pattinson attempted to answer it, and I think we can agree it would have been better off left as a concept rather than a tangible object.

Photo from Glamour

Behold: Piccolini Cuscino

(Italian for "Little Pillow")

According to GQ, at the start of his entrepreneurship journey, "he went so far as to design a prototype that involved the use of a panini press, and then... set up a meeting with Los Angeles restaurant royalty Lele Massimini." This meeting had little success, and Massimini was, thankfully, unimpressed.

Back in 2019, my dad had an idea to create brownie-ice-cream popsicles. He created a ton of prototype batches, much to the enjoyment of my brother and I. His idea was, I can assure you, much tastier and a much more viable concept. So how come he never got a meeting with Los Angeles restaurant royalty? Because he never played the sparkly, blood-lusted love interest in a teen film.

When you have the sort of stardom that comes from helping create over 300 million dollars in profit, you have a lot working for you. You have an insurance to these types of connections. Fortunately, for the good of society, these connections don't ensure a product launch.

Pattinsons unsuccessful meeting in 2019 did, sadly, not deter him from further cuisine pursuits in 2020. In May of 2020, he recreated this pasta phenomenon in his interview with QC magazine. After reading the instructions for creating one of these Picconolo Cuscino dishes, I'm sure you'll agree the world is left much better without it.

Do not try this at home.

Ingredients:

breadcrumbs or cornflakes

pre-sliced cheese

tomato sauce

pasta

half a burger bun

sugar

Other items:

lighter

aluminum foil

microwave

latex gloves

Directions:

Put on gloves (it's about to get messy)

2. Cover pasta with water in a bowl and microwave for 8 minutes.

3. While cooking, create a bowl-shape out of aluminum foil, and cover with crushed up cornflakes or breadcrumbs.

4. Cover with sugar.

5. Place cheese slices on top

Allegedly, Pattinson used nine packs of cheese for this.

6. and then cover with more sugar.

“It really needs a sugar crust,” -Robert Pattinson

7. Cover with tomato sauce.

8. When pasta is finished microwaving, dump it on top of your creation.

At this point, Pattinson says there is "...absolutely no chance this is gonna work. Absolutely none,” But keep going anyways.

9. Pour more sugar on top of the pasta.

10. Hollow out your half of the burger bun, and place it on top.

Before this next step, take off your latex gloves. Pattinson didn't, and it did not go well.

11. Take your lighter and burn a fun design onto the top for aesthetic quality points.

Robert says “I’m just gonna do the initials.…” meaning P.C., for Piccolini Cuscino. The interviewer, Zach Baron, at GQ, says "at this point, he accidentally ignites one of his latex gloves, which promptly melts onto his palm." So take extra caution. This part could hurts

12. Wrap your pasta concoction in more aluminum foil, creating a type of ball.

13. Place the pasta ball in the microwave for ten minutes.

At this point, if you've done this correctly, the microwave should shark, catch on fire, and shut down the electricity, just as it did in the GQ interview.

I don't recommend eating. Robert Pattinson didn't. He figured it was best left ignored, and thats precisely what he did.

He says, “I’m really trying to sell this company... I’m doing this for my brand.”

As of 2024, there have been no official mentions of a Piccolini Cuscino fast-food business. Let's hope there never are.

[thehighpriestess22]

2023

Last year I made a post with 3 lists that I wanted to complete by the end of the year, and I want to do the same thing for 2023 but on a bigger scale. I want to push myself to achieve, experience and enjoy more in life.

Life is short and I have unfortunately wasted a lot of it by being a home body... for 2023, I want to push myself to be out and to make memories and fulfil life!

So below I have new lists that I want to be able to complete by the end of 2023.

Meet New People... 1. Natalia at work 👧🏻 2. Bobby at work 👧🏻 3. Brandon & Faith 4. My Uncles Girlfriend 5. Charlotte at work 👱🏻‍♀️ 6. Karby’s Fella 🙋🏻‍♂️ 7. Ryan - New Manager 🙋🏼‍♂️ 8. Joe D - Colleague 🙋🏻‍♂️ 9. Kirsty - Colleague 🙋🏻‍♀️ 10. Heidi - Colleague 🙋🏻‍♀️ 11. Chris - Colleague 🙋🏻‍♂️ 12. Colleen - HR 🙋🏼‍♀️ 13. Freddie and Ella 14. Ant and Lilly 15. Luke and Lauren Notes:

Go Out... 1. Wagamama with BF and S.I.L 🍲 2. Chelmsford - Boom Battle Bar with BF and S.I.L 🎯 3. Kervan Kitchen with BF and Big E 4. Las Iguanas at the O2 Arena 🍸 5. Harrow Pub with work lot 🍷 6. Harrow Pub with In-Laws and BF 🍷 7. Drill Pub 🌞 8. Turtle Bay in Romford 🍹 9. Giggling Squid in Brentwood 🍷 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

New Places... 1. Boom Battle Bar 🎯 2. Cleveland Clinic 🏥 3. Marley’s I’m Hornchurch 🍷 4. Dad’s Flat 💫 5. Jon’s Apartment 💫 6. Elley’s House 💫 7. Vicky’s New Flat 💫 8. New Office in Peterborough 🏢 9. Premier Inn in Peterborough 🏨 10. Hilton Hotel in Derby 11. London Zoo 🦓 12. Clacton Beach 🏝️ 13. Turtle Bay in Romford 🍹 14. Giggling Squid in Brentwood 15. Stanford Cricket Club 🏏 Notes:

Birthday Celebrations... 1. Mum’s Birthday Dinner 🥳 2. Sister In Laws Birthday Drinks and Meal! 3. Cousins 24th Birthday Meal 🥘 4. Putt-shack and Las Iguanas for Dads Birthday 🎉 5. My Birthday Breakfast 🥞 6. My Birthday Dinner 🍽️ 7. M.I.L’s Birthday Dinner 🤩 8. Granddads Birthday dinner and cake 🎂 9. Boyfriends Birthday 🥳 10. S.I.L’s Boyfriends Birthday Drinks 🍺 11. Tanya’s Birthday dinner and Drinks 🍹 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Things That Made Me Happy... 1. I was the the 2nd top earner in the company today! 🥳 2. Lost over half a stone so far in Jan 💪🏼 3. Achieved a 22 hour intermittent fast 💃 4. Started redecorating my bedroom 🎨 5. Finding out Demi is pregnant 🤰 6. Spending Easter Sunday with family 🐣 7. I was asked to be my Nieces and Nephews Godmother 🩵 8. I’ve lost over 2 stone 🙌🏼 9. My new Pandora ring from BF 💍 10. Seeing my Sister after months of not seeing her ♥️ 11. My sister bringing Sonny home 🐶 12. Finding out my cousin is pregnant 🤰 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Things I'm Grateful For... 1. Elleys recovery from her car accident 💖 2. My Godson 👦🏼 3. My job and the people I work with 💙 4. Mine and my families health 🫶 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Dates With BF... 1. Lakeside and Las Iguana’s 🍔 2. Figo in Brentwood 🍕 3. Nando’s in Hornchurch 🍗 4. Drill Pub for grub and a few drinks 🍺 5. Alex’s Italian restaurant in Hornchurch 🍝 6. Wagamama in Romford 🍜 7. Marley’s for our 6th anniversary 🥰 8. Nando’s in Hornchurch 🍗 9. Drill Pub / Day Drinking 🍸 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Pamper Myself... 1. Got my nails done 💅 2. Got my eyebrows done 👀 3. New set of acrylics 💅 4. Bath with bath oils, a bath bomb and a book 📖 5. Shopping and infills done with mum 💕 6. Dyed my hair 💆🏻‍♀️ 7. Got my nails done 💅 8. Got my hair dyed and cut 💃 9. Bought new makeup and skin care 👄 10. Got my nails done 💅 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Books I Read... 1. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy 📖 2. The Idea Of You by Robinne Lee 👓 3. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover 💖 4.Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover 💙 5. It starts with us by Colleen Hoover ❤️ 6. Verity by Colleen Hoover 💫 7. Cat Lady by Dawn O’Porter 🐱 8. Hex and The City 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Notes:

Movies And Series I Watched... 1. Ginny and Georgia 2. Ghost Busters 👻 3. Smile 🤪 4. Clarkson’s Farm 🐑 5. Station 19 🚒 6. Quiet Place 2 👹 7. Call The Midwife 🤱🏻 8. Mood Fall 🌔 9. The Tomorrow War 👽 10. Fury 🔫 11. Drive 🚘 12. Raya and the Last Dragon 13. Princess Diaries 14. Princess Diaries 2 15. Wizards of Waverley Place Notes:

[adventurebeforedementia]

Beautiful Côte d’Azur

We’ve been walking in the footsteps of the world’s top celebrities on the Côte d’Azur. Our trip along the French Riviera has taken us to Cannes - famous for its international film festival - and Antibes and St Tropez - home of 60’s film star, Bridgette Bardot among many other A list celebrities.

At each of these towns, the harbours are jam packed with the most luxurious yachts, travelling from London, New York and across Europe to visit. Luxury villas can be rented here with staring prices of 27,000 Euros a week, rising to eye-watering sums for the most unique.

But that’s OK. We don’t need a luxury pad. We’re quite at home in Big Boy and we were just happy to find out more about what makes these towns so special.

Cannes’ connection with the stars can be seen everywhere, not least in the street art which can be found across the town. Huge murals of Marilyn Monroe, French actors and comedians and a detailed painting which included Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin and the Star Wars’ robots among others are painted on the buildings.

We loved Cannes’ old town and harbour front. During our stay, we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary, eating fabulously fresh seafood at one of the quay restaurants in one of our most favourite parts of Europe.

A quick train ride took us to Antibes, a really charming place with its old town enclosed with ramparts. The Nomad of Antibes - an unusual sculpture designed by a Spanish artist of a man looking out to sea - sits on part of the ramparts adjoining the port. The statue was created as part of a temporary exhibition but is now owned by the city and the Picasso Museum, so now it belongs to Antibes.

At both Cannes and Antibes, the daily fruit and flower markets are really special. Here you can buy a huge variety of fruit and vegetables, spices, olives, fish, meat and the most beautiful bouquets. We love a good market and bought plenty of fresh fruit.

After saying goodbye to Cannes, we headed along the coast road to the Gulf of St Tropez and dropped into the town for a quick visit.

St Tropez started life as a fishing village and it still has a fish market decorated with elaborate tiles marking its past. It also has a long connection with artists and, even though we had lost the sun and it was threatening rain, they were still out in force on the quayside.

But St Tropez as you can imagine, is extremely expensive. You’ll pay 10 Euros for a tea or coffee just to be sitting at the quayside. Our budget doesn’t stretch to such luxury, so we headed off on the next part of our trip.

Now we are staying just outside Montpelier and looking forward to exploring the city. The clouds have moved in and there’s not much sun, but it’s still warm and better than the U.K. weather. So we’re not complaining.

[juphanie]

Tis the end of the 2nd round of our trip. Figured I would highlight the top 10 stops we made.

Stonehenge - we weren't going to visit London and not make this stop. Glad we did cause this pic is EPIC! Look, there is even a dove flying over my head. Just epic...

Large Hadron Collider - Geneva Switzerland is one of the two most expensive places in all of Europe. (Zurich is the other). We went out and had Fondue for dinner and I told the Airbnb host "man, we just went to a really expensive restaurant, but it was good." Turned out to be the cheapest meal we could find during that stop. Our francs were going fast. Like atoms flying near the speed of light.. see what I did there?

Rialto Bridge - Venice Italy has our affection. Next trip we take to France will no doubt include another visit to the City of Love. I miss you, Spritzes!

The Colosseum - Rome overwhelmed us with all it had to offer. We were seeing sites and taking pics trying to collect them all, but the Pokemon were too many. Literally, we would see one thing and be like wow, and then turn around and there was something else. We had to go home the first day and regroup with a plan for what we wanted to see, cause it was out of control. So next we went and saw....

Pompeii - Probably the single most amazing ancient site we saw on this trip (and we saw a lot). Being allowed to explore with no limitations, and experiencing walking through the streets and standing in the rooms the way the citizens of Pompeii once did was enough to keep me looking over my shoulder and asking "did you hear something?"

Roman Aquaducts - totally underrated. These are GIANT structures spanning I don't know how far, bringing water to cities that could not exist without them. It was like seeing dinosaur bones left standing in their tracks in the middle of a field. Too cool.

Baths of Caracalla - it took 9000 workers 5 years to build. When it was completed, 6000 Romans at a time could come bathe in this giant complex. Another underrated site defined as such because I'd never heard of them and this Tumblr is all about me, let's face it.

GGANTIJA - while visiting Malta, we saw the Tarxien Temples, Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, Hagar Qim, Mjandra Temple, and the beast you see above. A solid tour of ancient temples so epic, people make money writing books and TV shows about how aliens must have been involved. The feeling I got, having visited these, is I have to pick one view or the other: either it's AMAZING what early man accomplished or aliens are kind of disappointing in their lack of terrestrial abilities.

I choose to be amazed. We had a guide on the morning of the Spring Equinox who said: "it's kind of insulting to our ancestors that we see what they were able to achieve and say "you couldn't have done this on your own, you had help." Instead, we can stand in awe of what can be achieved when mankind works together toward a common goal."

The Phoenician Cart Ruts - Probably aliens.

Arc de Triomf - Does this belong in the top 10? Maybe not, but I can't just leave Barcelona Spain off the list completely. We intend to come back and visit. If we skip dinners in Geneva, we should be able to afford to stay here for a month or so. That will be nice.

I think we had hit our max on wanting to experience all the sites and sounds of the European Pokemon collecting by our last day in Barcelona, cause instead of rushing from Site A to Site B, we just bought a few Estrella Damms (popular beer in Spain) from a corner market and brought them into a Taco Bell and had a picnic, lol. That's a true story.

[ausetkmt]

From private “clubstaurants” to NFT reservation tokens to concierge services, getting a table is a lot easier if you’ve got the money.

Credit...Jonathan Carlson

Published Oct. 15, 2022Updated Oct. 18, 2022

As long as there have been high-status, celebrity-studded restaurants, there have been people clamoring to get into them, working contacts, making phone calls, greasing palms. Lately, though, it can seem like every restaurant in New York is that kind of restaurant.

In the pandemic era — with hours cut back in many cases, and a public eager to eat out once again — the competition for tables has reached a frenzied pitch on electronic reservation platforms.

“Without over-embellishing, within five seconds basically all reservations are taken,” said Steve Saed, who started #FreeRezy, a free electronic forum where people could swap reservations among themselves. “It’s like winning the lottery to eat at these places,” he added.

But a new generation of tactics have emerged to help would-be diners jump the line, including latter-day concierge services, NFTs granting holders special privileges, members-only credit card perks and private “clubstaurants.” What they all have in common is that they will cost you.

“However many years ago, it was slip the host or hostess $20 and bypass the line,” said Alex Lee, the chief executive of Resy and vice president of American Express Dining. He runs the companies’ Global Dining Network, a program that offers a select group of Amex members (Amex owns Resy) access to certain restaurant perks through the reservation platform.

The program, he suggested, is just the natural evolution of that furtive $20. For an annual credit card fee in the hundreds or sometimes thousands, Global Dining Access members can obtain priority reservations at hot restaurants across the United States. “The first thing customers want is access, right?” Mr. Lee said.

But at certain members-only restaurants, a reservation alone is not enough.

Haiku, a private Japanese restaurant in Miami, makes a slightly different calculation. The restaurant accepts members by invitation only, for an annual fee, and asks them to commit to at least four reservations annually for a 10-to-12-course kaiseki-inspired omakase menu. The restaurant declined to discuss either the application process or the price.

Jeff Zalaznick, a partner at Major Food Group, was only slightly more forthcoming about plans for the New York debut of ZZ’s Club, which will feature a members-only Carbone. Like the first ZZ’s in Miami, which offers members access to a Japanese restaurant, a sushi bar, a bar and lounge and a cigar terrace, ZZ’s Club New York will bring the Major Food Group experience to the financial and social elite. (Like Haiku, Major Food Group would not disclose the fee or the application process.)

But given that the original Carbone — which recently lost its Michelin star — is already impossible to get into, is it really necessary to have an even more exclusive version just two miles away?

“One of the great things about being a private member’s club, is the fact that you really can tailor everything on the food and beverage side to your customers at an even higher level than you can, obviously, when you’re just a public restaurant,” Mr. Zalaznick said.

This means knowing what members want, and how exactly they want it: How do they take their steak? Do they prefer still or sparkling water? What is their standing order, and with which modifications?

Diners can have all those things at the London import Casa Cruz, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but for a stratospheric price tag. The top-floor dining room there is reserved for the 99 members of the restaurant’s “investor group of partners” who have paid between $250,000 and $500,000 to join.

“I think there’s a demand for curation,” said Noah Tepperberg, the co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, which next year is opening a private club in the River North neighborhood of Chicago, in collaboration with the restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You.

In the grand tradition of private clubs — from New York City’s Union Club to San Francisco’s Bohemian Club to the recently rebranded ’Quin House in Boston — these exclusive clubstaurants require not only cash but status.

“Restaurants began as places to show off status,” said Andrew P. Haley, an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. Generally, this took place in public, where discerning diners could be seen demonstrating their discernment.

The members-only clubstaurant, on the other hand, confers another kind of status, suggested Megan J. Elias, the director of the gastronomy program at Boston University: “You can be a connoisseur among a very small number of connoisseurs.”

Mr. Saed said he’s not surprised that access is being monetized.

“Part of it tracks to the types of people that are renting in New York now,” he said. “With rents pushing over $4,000 to $5,000, I think that the proportion of people that are living here that have the discretionary income to spend are kind of more here.”

Still other restaurants — the public kind — are leaning into patronage-style programs, aiming to give certain customers premier access, while remaining open to the rest of us.

Under normal circumstances, it can take weeks or months to get into Dame, the West Village fish-and-chips sensation. But there is a workaround: Front of House, a platform designed to help restaurants sell “digital collectibles,” also known as NFTs, that grant holders special access.

Instead of lining up at 4:30 p.m. on a Monday, the one day Dame takes walk-in diners, a devoted diner could pay $1,000, which buys them the ability, with at least 24 hours notice, to book a table once a week through the end of 2022. (20 such tokens have been created; 11 have been sold so far.)

Stephanie Dumanian, a cosmetic dentist in Manhattan and a fan of the restaurant, was trying without success to make a reservation for her husband’s birthday when she found Front of House. She bought a token in July, and has been three times since. “It’s been great,” she said. “I feel like I’m supporting a local business.”

Colin Camac, a co-founder of Front of House, said the platform is simply expediting intimacy.

“I think one of the best things in the world is going into a place just like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, where they know what you like, where your martini is sitting there as soon as you walk in,” said Mr. Camac, who is also a regional director at Resy. “It’s an easier way to be part of that community if you don’t have the time to really invest in it.” In other words, anyone can be a regular, for a price.

“It’s kind of a trade secret in the concierge space that you have to build relationships, and spend a lot of time doing it, in order to deliver these very hard to get reservations,” said Peter Adams, the founder of Table Concierge.

His start-up is for people with money but not time, and a would-be diner doesn’t actually have to be a regular to get treated like one. “You could do this on your own,” he said, but he streamlines the process “so you don’t have to wake up at 8 a.m. or book at midnight.”

For a price — usually $50 per reservation per person, but it depends on the difficulty — Mr. Adams works his connections to open doors that appear closed to the rest of us. (White glove service means he will go as far as going to a restaurant in person to negotiate on a client’s behalf.)

With a week or so warning, he puts his success rate at 90 percent. You want Lilia? He’ll get you Lilia, nevermind what Resy says. “We can get you in anywhere other than Rao’s,” he said of the exclusive Italian restaurant in East Harlem.

Though he added: “But if you want to give me $10,000, I can find a way to get you into Rao’s.”