Ashton wears a dress and sweater by MOLLY GODDARD, an earcuff by CHARLOTTE CHESNAIS and a ring by JENNIFER FISHER. The work of a convincing performer is to make a practice of disjunction, blurring fact and fiction until it’s no longer clear where the performance ends. Zawe Ashton, an actor and writer from East London, has been performing for so long that she sometimes feels as though she has “just woken up.” “There has been this eye, this gaze, that has followed me since birth, ” she says. This is what it is to have grown up as a child This story is from Kinfolk Issue Forty-Five Buy Now Related Stories Films Issue 49 Mamoudou Athie The shape-shifting actor is on a roll. Films Issue 49 Fares Fares After almost 25 years, the master actor steps behind the camera. Films Issue 49 Ruben Östlund Crude, contrary—and killing it: Meet the auteur of awkwardness. Films Issue 49 Mamoudou Athie The shape-shifting actor is on a roll. Films Issue 49 Fares Fares After almost 25 years, the master actor steps behind the camera. Films Issue 48 Slaying It On the building blocks of horror.