Lily Allen: from chart-topping handbag kid to the heart of London’s West End

The singer is back in front of a live audience this week, playing a woman with a real point of view' in a spooky new play, 2:22 - A Ghost Story

There, in the background, wearing drop pearl earrings, is 13-year-old Lily Allen dressed up as a little lady-in-waiting. Cinema audiences watching Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth when the film of that name came out in 1998 might have been concentrating on the queen's courtly dancing in the middle of the frame, but yes, it really was Allen playing a mini royal favourite in director Shekhar Kapur's lavish production.

Now, more than two decades later, the 36-year-old singer-songwriter is taking centre stage as an actress in the West End, appearing in a spooky new play, 2:22 - A Ghost Story, which opens this week.