Defined Magazine

Mia Threapleton Is Carving Her Own Path

27th May, 2025

Words by Emily Zemler

Photos by Rachell Smith

Styling Natalie Westernoff

Earrings FOPE Gold and diamond Love Nest, Dress PRADA

In The Phoenician Scheme, Mia Threapleton joins an elite group of actors: those who have worked with auteur filmmaker Wes Anderson. Starring as Liesel in the film was an understandably “surreal” experience for Threapleton, who has been pursuing an onscreen career since she was a teenager.

But despite growing up as the daughter of acclaimed actress Kate Winslet, there was never any expectation for Threapleton to follow in her footsteps. Mia, 24, discovered a love of acting on her own and was determined to pursue it in her own way. Her role in The Phoenician Scheme is the culmination of a decade of work and persistence.

“[Working as an actor] was not something that was ever impressed upon me,” Mia says, speaking over Zoom from her home in the U.K. “I didn't grow up experiencing that [pressure] from her.” She understands now why Winslet never took Mia and her five half-siblings into work. “Because, to me, it feels the equivalent of a lawyer bringing their child into a courtroom,” she adds. “As I’ve grown up, actually, the more grateful I am that it has happened the way it happened because it has meant that all of my experiences and all of the things that I've done have all been from me. They’ve all been things that I wanted and that I put in work to do. That was something that [my mom] was actually really, really supportive of me doing because that is exactly what happened to her.”

As a child, Mia attended acting camps as a kid and always found it fun, but never saw that as an actual future. “The most enjoyable thing about it was that I loved doing it,” she recalls. “I didn't really know why I did it. It was just there.” By her early teens, though, it became clear to her that she wanted to pursue acting more seriously. She began searching open-casting websites, just to see what was out there. “I was aware it was something that might not happen,” she says. “I had a backup to a backup to a backup and then a contingency plan after that. I knew that it might not happen.”

But roles did begin to arrive. At 14, Mia appeared in period drama A Little Chaos alongside Winslet and later was cast on TV series Dangerous Liaisons. Then, several years ago, she got a call from her agent suggesting she meet with British writer and director Dominic Savage, who was behind a series of films called I Am... for Channel 4. She assumed it was a general conversation, but Savage had a particular role in mind for Mia in his next film, I Am Ruth. When she got home, she told Winslet about the project.

“She was like, ‘Yes, I think I'm in that thing,’” Mia recalls, laughing. “That’s when everything clicked in place. But that whole process came through completely separate channels.” Mia ended up starring alongside Winslet in the dramatic piece, about a single mother and her depressed teenage daughter, who can’t release herself from the negative grip of social media.

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“The whole process itself was very intense, but we didn't actually ever speak about what we were doing,” Mia says of acting opposite her real-life mom. “I honestly think one of the only conversations that we really had about the work was when she turned to me one day, I think it was after work, and said, ‘We can't be sad for the next two and a half weeks.’ We were able to keep it at arm’s length. I'm lucky that my mom and I have always had a very good mother-daughter relationship. Because of the way that Dominic was directing, it was all very electric. He would direct us in different rooms. And because we were all improvising, neither of us really knew what it was that we were actually doing when we came back in. But once the day was over everyone would give each other hugs, especially if it was a hard day, and we would go back to wherever it was that we were staying. It was oddly easy to switch it on and switch it off.”

Although she got the role on her own merit, the success of I Am Ruth and the prominence of Winslet, who won a BAFTA for the role, certainly helped to propel her forward. Soon after, Mia joined Apple TV+ series The Buccaneers as Honoria Marable, a role she will reprise in the upcoming second season, which premieres globally June 18. The Phoenician Scheme, in theaters May 30, represents an even bigger step forward for Mia. She plays the daughter of eccentric wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro). Planning an elaborate new enterprise, Zsa-zsa enlists Liesl as the heir to his fortune, dragging her along on a dangerous mission that involves spies, rogue family members, and royalty.

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Mia was cast as Liesl after a series of auditions, including a self-tape and several in-person meetings in London. She remembers the exact day she got the part: December 17, 2023. She was on a train and immediately called her best friend, crying. “She burst into tears as well,” Mia says. “She was like, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe it. I'm so proud of you. This has been your dream for so long.’ It felt like, ‘This is really happening.’”

The film was shot last year at Babelsberg Studio in Germany. All of the cast, which also included Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, and Bryan Cranston, lived near the studio. It was a remarkably creative, positive environment and Mia loved every minute of it. She had been a longtime fan of Anderson, starting with his stop-motion film The Fantastic Mr. Fox when she was young, but working with him exceeded all expectations.

“It was mind blowing,” she says. “It was so connected and so collaborative and so calm and happy and fun. It was so much and Wes would drive you into work in a little golf cart. We'd all have breakfast, lunch, and dinners together. There was this lovely long table, and we'd all sit and chat about either what we’d done at work, what was happening the next day, or other things that were happening. Wes won an Oscar [for Best Live Action Short Film for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar] while we were filming, and that was wonderful. It was so, so wonderful. I have sent a couple of emails to West incrementally saying, ‘I think about it every day and I really miss it and I will never forget it and I will hold dearly to that experience.’”

Bracelet FOPE Love Nest Flex’it gold and diamond, Dress SELF-PORTRAIT, Gloves PAULA ROWAN, Shoes MIU MIU.

Mia took her role and preparation very seriously. So much so that she refused to sit down while wearing her immaculate white costume. “I thought, ‘If this gets mud on it, we're all screwed for the whole day. I did not sit down the entire shoot because of the dress. I noticed the dress creased really easily and I knew that was going to be a problem.” Thankfully, she never felt any pressure beyond keeping her costume clean. “That was never really something that crossed my mind,” she says. “We were all doing it together, so nothing about it felt individually isolated. I was having far too much fun doing it and concentrating far too much on it to worry about what it meant for me.”

It's only now, as the film is getting ready to come out, that Mia is realizing the significance of her work. She recently saw her face on the film’s poster on the London Tube and she has been getting daily messages from friends saying they’ve spotted the advertisements around town. It’s all a bit surreal.

“I still feel like, ‘No, this is a dream. This is not really happening. Someone pinch me,’” she says. “I'm afraid that I will wake up from it. I feel so unbelievably lucky to have had the opportunity that I have to have done this job with Wes, someone who is so amazing at what he does and takes it so seriously and is fun too.”

Earrings and necklace FOPE Gold and diamond Love Nest, Flex’it gold Eka, Top PRADA.

Dress PRADA, Shoes MANOLO BLAHNIK, Gloves PAULA ROWAN.

Leaving The Phoenician Scheme behind was bittersweet, but Mia went almost immediately in shooting the second season of The Buccaneers, a welcome distraction. The new season expands the relationship between her character, a British socialite, and American debutante Mabel Elmsworth (Josie Totah). The new episodes also see Leighton Meester joining the cast. “She was so gorgeous,” Mia says of her new co-star. “And such a wonderful person.” As soon as they met, Meester immediately asked Mia for hiking recommendations near the set in Glasgow. “I sent her a list of easy-to-do hikes that I remembered from the last time we were filming,” Mia recalls. “She was so lovely, but sadly we didn't really have that many scenes together. I would have loved to have had a few more.”

Hiking and photography are Mia’s main hobbies. She loves being in the middle of the wilderness by herself and sometimes hikes late at night so she can arrive on a summit at sunrise. The difficulty of the climb forces her to concentrate, one foot in front of the other. She’s been collecting cameras since she was 15 and likes to experiment with film techniques, although her interest in visual media doesn’t necessarily mean she plans to shift into directing at some point. She observed Anderson on set and even sketched images of his sets while hiding under a table or behind a plant. “It is an incredible thing that directors can sort of hold this thing in their mind and make it happen in real life,” she notes. “And maybe one day I would like to do that. But right now I have absolutely no idea how I would do it.”

FOPE Gold and diamond Love Nest earrings, Flex’it gold Eka choker and Solo necklace. Rings, from left to right: FOPE Flex’it diamond Panorama, Solo Mia Luce with diamonds, gold Panorama Flex’it, Jumpsuit ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER.

Jumpsuit and Shoes ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER.

For now, Mia is content to keep carving out her own path in the entertainment industry. She’s aware of the legacy her mom leaves, of course, but Mia admittedly hasn’t even seen Titanic all the way through–perhaps one of the only women on Earth who hasn’t. “I remember the car scene happening and these hands appeared from behind my head and covered up my eyes,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘I can still hear everything!’” She adds, “I don't remember why it was on. My mother would never optionally put that film on. She does not like watching herself. And I totally understand why.”

Mia has seen The Phoencian Scheme, despite sharing that sentiment with Winslet. She was alone in a screening room. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh my God, that's my face. Oh, wow, that's a lot of my face!” she says. “ And then the opening credits rolled and I burst into tears and kept crying as the film went along. It’s so exciting that other people are going to be able to see it. It feels like, ‘The film is out there in the world. What’s going to happen now?’”

The Phoenician Scheme is in cinema's now.