The British actor landed the role of a lifetime as the sultry, human incarnation of Ursula in The Little Mermaid. Five years on, she reprises the role of a younger, more yassified woman on the brink – this time in Ryan Murphy’s brutal social parable, The Beauty. So, what does it feel like when the fantasy Hollywood is chasing…is you?

At Jessica Alexander’s feet, a house cat is perched – stoic, possibly asleep, well-accustomed to life by her side. Behind her, a clock tells the wrong time; crown mouldings hint at a history far older than she is. The whole scene reads very portrait-of-an-actor-at-home – a study in domestic peace that stands in stark contrast to her blood-soaked debut in Ryan Murphy’s latest fever dream. Except Jess isn’t at peace, and this isn’t quite home. “I’m already trying to book the next job, babe,” she laughs. “Back to the auditions.”

For the past five years, the 26-year-old has been balancing two lives: Jessica Alexander, rising actor, and Jess (preferred name), a West End girl. While she spent just six minutes on screen in 2023’s live-action TheLittle Mermaid as siren Vanessa, Ursula’s seductive human alter ego, the reception hinted at an inevitable ascent to bombshell status. Instead, that breakthrough was stalled by rolling strikes – a sobering reality of breaking into a saturated industry. And so, Jessica Alexander, transformed back into Jess: a young nanny in London (her charges would later watch The Little Mermaid, largely unimpressed). Appearing on a podcast better known for hosting established actors, Jess joked she’s likely one of the few guests still regularly self-taping. For the past six months, she’s been living with her parents in Richmond, the London suburb where she grew up – and where you’ll find her today, talking through her star-making turn in Ryan Murphy’s FX show, The Beauty.

“It’s just quite funny when you’re walking down the road living your silly little life, and you see the poster for the show that you’re in, and you’re like, ‘No one on the street knows I’m on that show,’” she says. “But unless you’re scrolling on Instagram or Twitter and see the response, it almost feels like nothing has happened.”

She did allow herself onto the platform currently known as X –just briefly, just a peek – and saw a take that made her laugh. “If I had a nickel for every time someone got yassified into Jessica Alexander, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but, weirdly, it happened twice,” read the tweet. Like Ursula in The Little Mermaid, in The Beauty, Rebecca Hall’s character Jordan Bennett contracts a sexually-transmitted disease that transforms her into an enviably beautiful woman in her mid-twenties…played by Jessica Alexander. Before I can wonder aloud what that might do to one’s ego, the actor volunteers: “I’m like, ‘What the actual hell?’ It’s so weird. Such a weird niche I’ve accidentally fallen into.

”Even distorted by a low-grade laptop camera, Jess is exactly as advertised. She has the kind of delicately feminine features that, a few centuries back, might have incited wars. In the modern context, that translates to Hollywood appeal, which she can thankfully back up with talent. The call from Ryan Murphy’s team came several days before Christmas, when Jess was in The Westbourne, a pub in Notting Hill, three pints of Guinness deep, and bumped into Arsenal legend Ian Wright. She would be needed immediately in New York to screen test with actor, now co-star Evan Peters, after which – pending approval – she could expect to relocate to the city for five months. “Consider my holiday cancelled,” she responded.

In Hulu’s The Beauty, Jess emerges “screaming, crying, throwing up” from a gooey placenta, which, surprisingly, is nothing new for the actor. A natural blonde, legend has it Jess chopped her hair into a bob and dyed it dark brown to attract a more complex calibre of roles – and it worked. She has since become the go-to girl for campy horror, performing memorably in both A Banquet and Primate. Still, no production has matched The Beauty in scale. Jess was picked up by boat in Venice in the wee hours ofthe morning, watched full blocks in New York City washed clean – all while acting opposite some of the industry’s top talent.

“I used to find it more intimidating,” she says of working with established talents. “Like I needed to mask parts of myself – I was embarrassed that I was nannying or waitressing and felt I needed to hide that to approach a set with a level of professionalism that made me look like a ‘proper actor.’ Meeting celebrities you admire feels like a big thing, but if they’re nice people, it’s just meeting anyone. And when it’s not, it’s usually because they’re out of touch. Sometimes I’m in rooms, and I remember I was a nanny six months ago, and I tune into the conversations and think, ‘Oh wow, I’m the only normal one at this table.’”

Jess earns her keep at home by putting dinner on the table –literally. Even something as simple as pesto pasta can prompt a delighted, ‘Phwoar – what do you call this, Jess?’ (“They make great roommates, and honestly, we all need to normalise living with your parents.”) Perks of sharing a roof with Jess also include being her plus-one to industry events: her mum joined her at The Beauty’s London premiere, where she spent the evening happily monopolising Evan.

“Afterwards, she was like, ‘Is he famous?’ I was like, ‘Mum, he is probably one of the best actors of our generation.’ She goes, ‘God, I wouldn’t have guessed that. He’s just such a lovely boy.’”

The star’s mum works in green energy, spending time in her youth on oil rigs; her father is a doctor for the NHS. By contrast, Jess knew from five-years-old that there was “no alternative route” to acting, forfeiting her acceptance to the various universities. Surprisingly, they were supportive. “I think a lot of parents would feel very anxious about that and maybe discourage it a little bit because it’s an unreliable and quite mentally damaging career to go into.”

While the actor doesn’t specify, there are countless pressures in the profession that could lead to “mental damage,” from rejection and emotionally taxing roles to the strain of distance or long hours on personal relationships. Then, of course, there’s the unending chatter from the peanut gallery, which can be heard every time she unlocks her phone. In the wake of The Little Mermaid’s release, Jess Alexander became a trending topic for the fact that she was obviously blocking anyone who’d allege she should have played in the titular role, not Halle Bailey.

“So many people were saying she shouldn’t have been cast as Ariel. People were so bitchy, actually. Aside from them just obviously being racist, it was also hilarious to me because everyone was like, ‘Did you see her in that singing scene? She’s got the fucking voice of an angel. Obviously, she could have pulled off playing Ariel.’ And I was like, ‘That’s Halle’s voice. I’m lip-syncing.’”

Her turn as an opera singer in the 2025 British historical drama Amadeus convinced friends she’d been hiding a secret talent, though Jess insists – now perhaps for the third or fourth time – “I’m really not good at anything else other than acting.” Still, she’s energised by physical challenges, even the prospect of Tom Cruise–level stunt work. In short, Jessica Alexander will do just about anything to land the role.

“It’s like, ‘If that’s what I need to do for an acting job, I’ll do it.’I saw Mia Goth say that she’ll just lie about anything to get any acting job she wants, and I really feel that way. If someone asked me if I could ride on horseback, I would say yes. To be honest, I think I can do anything I set my mind to – just on a career level, I’m not skilled enough and don’t care about anything else enough to do it.”

The Little Mermaid gave Jess just six minutes of screen time –but it was enough to convince audiences, and her representatives, that her arrival was inevitable. Then came a string of setbacks beyond anyone’s control: a writers’ strike, an actors’ strike, an industry seemingly on the brink of implosion. The work dried up, and Jess found herself back at square one.“It was a whirlwind summer that put me on the map, then all these opportunities that I was sure were going to come to me just kind of froze up,” she remembers. “And I think there’s also a lesson in that, to never put any expectation behind anything at all. You always think something’sgoing to change your life or your career, chances are it probably won’t – butit will enrich you as a person.”

If the careers of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Sylvester Stallone, or Charli xcx offer any lesson, it’s that Hollywood favours self-starters. During her downtime after The Beauty, Jess wrote, directed, and is now completing her first short film. Drawing from her time as a nanny, the coming-of-age story explores her bond with a young girl, filtered through a Sofia Coppola-like lens. The “painstaking” process of filmmaking, she says, gave her a new appreciation for the labour behind the camera…and tempered her sense of her impact on a film’s reception.“

I respect people who can switch off their ears to other people’s opinions and just make art that they like,” Jess explains. “That’s where cinema thrives – when people aren’t making things they think others willlike, because then you just get this middle-of-the-ground, appeasable-to-everyone stuff that doesn’t hold anyone’s attention or create discussion. I want to crack open a bottle of wine with the girls and talk about the movie after I’ve seen it. I want something to talk about.”

This year, from Jess’s standpoint, that’s Hamnet and Marty Supreme– both films capable of making Jess overlook the complexities of a lighting setup or the fact that a specific line sounded like automated dialogue replacement. Her dream would be to drop into the Lara Croft role in Tomb Raider, or a Jennifer’s Body reboot (Diablo Cody, are you listening?) And then there’s the other content she reveres, like comedian Brittany Broski’s Broski Report, or Utah-based reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives(“I saw on the recent series that Lana Del Rey is also obsessed with the show, so I feel slightly less bad about it now.”) Her partner, whose name she won’t confirm, is also an actor and got the chance to go to Salt Lake City for the Sundance Film Festival.

“I think people probably have all sorts of ideas about what would be most challenging about a relationship between actors. But actually, I think the most challenging thing can be the long distances and time apart,” she says. “He’s literally the light of my life. Our lives on a personal level havegotten incredibly better, but our careers too are blossoming – I think it’s probably because we encourage each other, we push each other in the right directions.”

As Jess fidgets, repositions, and grows animated, the family cat has remained unmoved – serenely tolerant of its human companion’s quirks. That’s the beauty in a feline friend: unconditional acceptance in a world that is rarely generous to women. For Jess, being seen as she truly is –a work-in-progress who’s partial to a good pint – must feel particularly radical, especially when she’s so often cast as an impossible ideal.

And yet, there’s a sense that Jess Alexander is still trying to outrun herself, drawn instead to the darker, dustier corners of the human psyche, where things are far less pretty. That’s where she feels most at home, and one suspects there will be no real peace until she’s proved it’s where she belongs. Coco Chanel once said, “Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.” Clearly, she never met an actor.

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Photography by JUANKR
Styling by Phoebe Lettice Thompson
Interview by Beatrice Hazlehurst
Hair by Paul Jones at Forward Artists using Hair by Sam McKnight
Make-up by Emma Regan using LV Beauty
Photography Assistant Daniel Bailey
Fashion Assistant Pav Nagra
Videography by Jay Sentrosi
Special Thanks to The Charlotte Street Hotel & Firmdale Hotels