Christmas season has officially started, thanks to the first round of Christmas adverts and festive films. Leading the way on the film front is Last Christmas, a feel good rom com starring Emilia Clarke, Emma Thompson and Henry Goulding. It tells the tale of cynical Kate (Clarke) meeting the optimistic Tom (Golding), who tries to bring back her Christmas cheer. However, in the process, he discovers a deeper side to Kate that very few others know…

The film is released on Friday (15 November) and the reviews so far have been mixed. Hello! has called it “the Christmas film of the decade”. But a less flattering Rolling Stone review compelled director Paul Feig to respond: “We can’t win everybody over but we will continue to try! I swear all of our hearts were in the right place. Can our one star at least be a really really big star?” And, here at Stylist, our reviewer praised Michelle Yeoh’s turn as Santa for being an underrated star performance in the film.     

But one person who won’t know about any of this feedback is the film’s leading actor, Clarke.

Speaking to BBC News, she revealed why she never Googles or reads reviews of her performances.

“I don’t look at them at all. It’s partly drama school training, and then you do a bit of theatre, and it’s just not helpful,” she explained.

“The way I see it, right, is that I stopped Googling myself within a year of Game of Thrones happening. Because I was like, ‘I don’t need to know what people think about the size of my bottom, thank you so much.’

Clarke then added: “And then when you stop Googling yourself, you then stop reading reviews. If someone says something really good, if you get a 15 million-star review, someone will tell you, and if you get a ‘one-star coal in the rectum’, someone’s going to tell you!”

(This was a reference to a line used in the aforementioned Rolling Stone review.)

You’ll have to wait until the weekend to review Last Christmas for yourself, but don’t expect Clarke to give a fig about what you think.

Images: Getty