She also paired the retro ensemble with a Van Cleef & Arpels necklace from 1957.

When selecting her gown for the 2022 Oscars, Caitriona Balfe looked to the past for inspiration, taking her styling cues from one of the most iconic actresses in Hollywood history: Grace Kelly.

The Belfast star managed to perfectly capture the aesthetic of silver screen sirens of yesteryear in a custom white column dress by Louis Vuitton featuring bejeweled straps and a peplum that descended into a ruffled train. She completed the look with a Van Cleef & Arpels heritage necklace, as well as diamond earrings, a bracelet, and a ring from the brand. Balfe explained to Vanity Fair that, “The inspiration for tonight’s look was 1950s and ‘60s Cristobal Balenciaga creations.” It was during this time period that late couturier became synonymous with gowns designed to showcase a woman’s figure in unique ways, relying on large prints or enveloping the body in columns to abstract the silhouette. She added that she specifically “wanted Nicolas [Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton’s creative director] to play with that.”

Balfe was enamored with the final look the designer came up with, but noted that her favorite aspect was “how this beautiful silk taffeta back met with the crystal straps and flowed out in to this beautiful architectural train.” But, of course, no Academy Awards ensemble would be complete without some jaw-dropping pieces of jewelry to go with it. The actor’s heritage Van Cleef & Arpels necklace was a particular standout as she pointed out that it’s “a beautiful statement piece from 1957. It just fit so perfectly with my inspiration of ’50s Balenciaga with a touch of Grace Kelly and we accented it with gorgeous diamond earrings, bracelet and ring.”
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Ahead of the Starz show’s long-awaited season six premiere, the Irish actor talks time-bending hair extensions, ‘60s makeup, and age-validating sex scenes.

For nearly a year of my life, I started each day by staring at Caitriona Balfe. More accurately, it was a floor-to-near-ceiling photo of Balfe, a print from an early-aughts Harper’s Bazaar editorial shoot. Propped right in front of the magazine’s office doors, she (silently) greeted me every morning during my time there as an editor. Although the Irish actor and former model’s face has been familiar to me and the fashion world for years, Balfe is now becoming an American household name. Recently, she’s co-starred in Oscar-nominated films such as Ford v Ferrari and Belfast, last year’s sweeping tale of the violent religiopolitical clash in 1990s Northern Ireland. But Balfe is most well known for her starring role in Starz’s smash drama Outlander, based on the best-selling romance series of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. Balfe plays Claire, a World War II nurse who accidentally time-travels from 1948 to Scotland’s bloody revolution — that’s 200 years into the past, give or take.

Fast forward to 2022, and I’m staring at Balfe once more — this time, on a Zoom call ahead of the March 6 premiere of Outlander’s long-awaited sixth season. For the first time, Balfe smiles back at me and gives me the rundown on the show’s extravagant wigs, age-inclusive romance, and what it’s like to age ten years each morning before work.

In Balfe’s on-set age transformation, little tweaks go a long way.

“It’s not jarring, usually. Not until you see it on screen,” says Balfe of the cosmetic aging process that hair and makeup artist Kerry Skelton has used to make Balfe (age 42) appear to be in her mid-fifties for the past two seasons. The show’s frequent flashbacks often roll back the clock on Claire’s appearance — or are they flashforwards? Time isn’t linear in the Outlander universe — the series’ sixth chapter picks up right before the start of the Revolutionary War, with Claire more visibly in middle-age.

“[Skelton] is amazing, and she has these magic little tricks that she does that highlight the things that [make you look older],” Balfe says, noting that the transformation doesn’t solely benefit the viewer. “Anything that can bring you closer to the character and remove your ego in the process is a good thing when you’re an actor. I relish the opportunity that we get to tell this story of a woman over this expanse of decades in her life.”
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The ‘Belfast’ co-stars played a game of Knowing Me, Knowing You with ELLE UK.

Hollywood’s biggest stars are used to meeting fans, taking selfies and signing autographs while in public. But the dentist’s chair is probably the last place Belfast star Caitríona Balfe thought she’d meet an admirer.

The Outlander actor and her Belfast co-star Jamie Dornan recently sat down to play a game of Knowing Me, Knowing You with ELLE UK testing their knowledge of the cast of the Oscar-nominated film, and confessed their most bizarre fan encounters to each other.

‘I was getting put under for a dental procedure and the anaesthesiologist was a massive, massive Outlander fan. She came with a cup, and then started to sing the theme tune to me as I was going under. So that was definitely a strange experience,’ Balfe said.

‘That’s terrifying!’ replied Dornan, who asked if the anaesthesiologist took photographs of her, with her mug, while she was going under sedation. ‘Probably,’ joked Balfe.
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“We’re going to have a what?” remembers Balfe of taking dance lessons with her onscreen husband. Plus, a look at how five other onscreen marriages are portrayed this awards season.

For Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan, working on Focus Features’ Belfast was unlike anything they’d done before. The actress, who plays Ma in Kenneth Branagh’s film based on his childhood, felt drawn to the story when she saw that the script was focused on ordinary people instead of the politics and ideology of Northern Ireland — which she often sees in projects that come her way. For Dornan, who plays Balfe’s husband, Pa, Belfast was set in his hometown, and he was enticed by the truthful story of a family struggling with crippling decisions, grief and unconditional love.

Plus, they got to work with a cast that included Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds and 11-year-old newcomer Jude Hill, whom Balfe and Dornan describe as a joy to work with. The duo reveal to THR how much freedom they had in portraying Branagh’s parents onscreen, explain that dancing was the most challenging part of the film, and remember how much rehearsal Dornan had for his “Everlasting Love” rendition — one of his two musical performances last year that took the internet by storm.

How did you get involved with the project?

CAITRíONA BALFE I think I was one of the last of the main actors to come on board. When I was first approached, I was told all of the lovely names that were already attached, and that was incredibly intimidating. I was sent the script, and it’s not that often you read something and you instantly … I felt like I knew Ma. I felt like I recognized my own mother in her but also many other women that I knew from Ireland. And also the subject matter. There have been so many films made about Northern Ireland that deal with the politics or the ideology, and of course, there’s a place for that, and they’re vastly important. There was nothing that I’d read before that focused on everyday people and with such compassion and with such empathy, so I was just blown away.
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As regular readers of this, or any, magazine will know, celebrity interviews tend to take place in one of several settings: flatteringly lit private corners of glamorous restaurants, lesser-known neighbourhood cafés, anonymous but lavish hotel suites. Churches? Not so much. But, owing to a turn of events (too tedious to recount here), it is in a chilly modern chapel in a north London church, sitting on cumbersome wooden chairs with hefty leather-bound Bibles tucked beneath them, that Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan find themselves for their interview with Vogue.

Inevitably, talk turns very quickly to religion. “It’s just not for me,” says Dornan, 39, those deep, nonchalant Belfast tones instantly recognisable. He is leaning back in his chair, a teabag stewing in the takeaway cup in his hand. “Whatever you feel you need, whatever helps you,” he continues. “I just never felt like I needed religion to tell me to treat people well.”

“I see the value in terms of, like, community,” interjects Balfe, 42, the daughter of a Catholic marriage counsellor mother, in her soft, lyrical Irish accent. “But it’s the organised sort of hypocrisy of it all that kind of gets me…”

It’s a somewhat intense, though not wholly unfitting, place to discuss the actors’ upcoming project, Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film about his childhood in Northern Ireland’s capital at the outset of the Troubles in August 1969. Balfe and Dornan play Ma and Pa, the parents of nine-year-old Buddy (based on Branagh), who, as violence descends on their street, blowing up their tight-knit community of Protestant and Catholic neighbours, are faced with an agonising decision: do they leave everything they’ve ever known and move to England? Or do they stay and take their chances?

Shot in richly atmospheric black and white (an homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson, says Branagh), it is a deeply evocative film, one that has catapulted all involved – Branagh, Dornan, Balfe, alongside Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench, and spellbinding young newcomer Jude Hill – to the forefront of every awards conversation going.
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