From the Moscow of Tolstoy to Dickensian London: Tuppenc’s talent goes a long way

Tuppence Middleton tells of the contrasting costume drama roles in War and Peace and Dickensian that have catapulted her to stardom

Jumping from one persona to another is second nature to an actor. But what happens if you are simultaneously playing two parts: one the most unscrupulous, lascivious woman on television; the other, the best-behaved and most cruelly put-upon?

Tuppence Middleton, star of both War and Peace and Dickensian, appears on British television screens this winter in two entirely different guises. She plays the manipulative seductress Hélène Kuragin in the BBC 1 adaptation of Tolstoy’s Russian epic and is also to be seen on the same channel as the guileless Amelia Havisham, victim of an evil fortune hunter, in screenwriter Tony Jordan’s episodic Victorian series.

There is no comparison to being in Russia and feeling that sense of culture that they have there

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