She once played a younger version of Angelina Jolie, now Ella Purnell heads up and away with new film

SHE once played a younger version of Angelina Jolie. Now, at 20, the star of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children comes into her own.

IN order to play the secretary of wartime PM Winston Churchill in a movie that recently wrapped filming in the UK, actor Ella Purnell had to get her mother to “teach me how to use a typewriter”.

Geez, Ella, way to make us feel old!

“Oh shut up!” laughs the Londoner, who turned 20 one week ago. “My mother had to learn in school, she’s really good at it, so I was like, well, might as well learn from the best.”

Mum probably couldn’t help as much on Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where Purnell plays Emma, a girl lighter than air who wears a pair of lead shoes to keep from floating away.

Ella Purnell is floating on air as Emma — with Asa Butterfield’s Jake — in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

The movie is the latest fantastical offering from the weird and wonderful Tim Burton.

“When you read all these wacky stage directions with mythical children and all these amazing effects they’re going to add in, you’re like, ‘Gosh, how are they gonna do this?’,” says Purnell. “But then you remember it’s Tim Burton and your faith is restored.”

Having studied acting, singing and dancing since she was a child, Purnell went pro aged 11 with a role in the London stage production of Oliver! If there’s any doubt as to her potential, note this: She played the younger version of Keira Knightley’s character in Never Let Me Go and the teenage Maleficent to Angelina Jolie’s full-grown model in the 2014 Disney hit.

Purnell glittering on the red carpet during the Venice Film Festival. Picture: Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Jaeger-LeCoultre

“I don’t think there was any point where I was like, ‘I want to be an actor for the rest of my life’. The nice thing about being a kid is you don’t have to make those decisions,” Purnell says. “Then all of a sudden you blink and you’re 18 ... I think I’m still figuring out.

“I can’t just pretend to be someone else all my life, I have to mix it up. But I know that this is my industry, I know this is where I belong.”

As a kid, Purnell stuck an article about Tim Burton on her bedroom wall: “It was about him and Helena (Bonham-Carter, Burton’s former partner) and how they think they’re actually really normal. I found it hilarious.”

The former first couple of weird — Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter — once adorned Ella Purnell’s bedroom wall. Picture: Sean Dempsey — WPA Pool/Getty Images

When she was cast in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, she finally took it down.

“I was like, I can’t stare at my boss every day,” she laughs. “It suddenly became really real. I was proper star struck when I met him in my audition, but I passed it off as nerves.”

Luckily, that awe-struck feeling faded away on set — as it did with co-stars Eva Green (who plays the protective titular character) and Samuel L. Jackson (the villain of the piece).

“Samuel L. Jackson made me relax because he was so funny,” says Purnell. “And Eva, I learnt a lot off her — I always look up to strong female actors, ones that stand up for their beliefs, and she very much represents that.”

Purnell (far right) as Emma with some of her peculiar family. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

Based on the Ransom Riggs novel, Miss Peregrine’s follows a seemingly regular boy, Jake (Asa Butterfield) to a mysterious refuge where a falcon-like mother figure cares for children with unusual abilities, or “peculiarities”.

As well as being light as air, Purnell’s Emma can control the element — breathing an air pocket into a sunken ship, for example. When hidden enemies threaten their peculiar haven, Emma must step up to protect her family.

“She’s a lot smarter and a lot braver than she lets on in the first half of the film,” Purnell says, proudly. “She pulls her own.”

MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN OPENS SEPTEMBER 29

Originally published as She once played a younger version of Angelina Jolie, now Ella Purnell heads up and away with new film