The Walking Dead Star Eleanor Matsuura Shares Swimsuit Photo From London

1. She Loves Her Family

Matsuura is grateful to have her family with her when she’s filming. “When I’m in Atlanta [for The Walking Dead], we don’t shoot on the weekends, which is amazing,” she says. “So weekends are for a bit of line learning, bit of reset and thinking about what shooting schedule I have for next week. But also, I have a family, so my family come with me everywhere. The weekends are spent with them where I’m being a mum, doing mummy stuff.”

2. She's Got Style

Matsuura describes her style as simple with a twist. “I wear a lot of dark-coloured clothes – mostly black – but will often add in a pop of color or a texture like fake fur,” she says. “In terms of shapes, I like my clothes to be well-structured and well-fitting. [My favorite fashion era is] the 70s – I love that era of kimonos, fringing and long, flowing dresses. I’m so pleased flares are making a comeback. I love labels like Chloé, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. I also love Halston Heritage for red-carpet dresses.”

3. Pandemic Slowdown

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Matsuura says she struggled to feel creative during the pandemic lockdowns. “I felt so uncreative for so long,” she says. “I remember that first initial wave of, ‘Oh my gosh, this is happening. Everything's shut down. No one can go anywhere,’ and there was an immediate response from everyone going, ‘I'm going to make a funny sketch’ or ‘I'm going to write’ or ‘here's the time I needed to write my novel.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I don't have an ounce of motivation.’ I really lost my sense of my playfulness and my creativity and it seemed to be compounded by this external pressure from social media that we have to be productive with our time. I sat with it for a long time and I realize now that that productivity, the pressure to be constantly busy, it's just capitalism. We're all just living in a capitalist world. Once I kind of aligned myself with this realization, I made peace with it pretty quickly. I put it to bed and I was like, ‘Okay, I'm just gonna be here.’”

4. Music Lover

Matsuura has a number of playlists to get her through the week. “I like music when I’m driving to work to film, driving on set to get me in the mood or character,” she says. “I pick playlists for every kind of moment in the day to match my mood. At the moment, I’m actually going through lots of old music like The Beatles and old Bowie albums; I’m literally going through them album by album because we don’t listen to albums anymore. It’s actually kind of cool to listen to something as a complete concept album, how it was meant to be heard. There’re so many things, so many beautiful albums which I just haven’t appreciated for a long time because you just hear the songs and get used to that. It’s been really cool going back and listening to them as a whole piece.”

5. More Than An Actor

Matsuura refuses to be pigeonholed as an entertainer. “I want to look into more producing, more directing, more writing,” she says. “The work that's really turning me on at the moment is all the women that are juggling all of those things, spinning all of those plates. I'm really noticing that women are more and more stepping up and going, “No, I'm not going to be in a box.” It's okay for us to be more than just an actor now.”