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Morgane Polanski has an extraordinary head of thick chestnut-brown hair, and she knows exactly where she got it from. "One half is all my mom's, and the other half is all my dad's, so I have twice the normal amount," the 22-year-old actress says in her cheerful French accent, demonstrating with two hefty pigtails. Her parents, in fact, do have great hair—and quite a lot of it—among other, more notable characteristics: Her mother is the French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner, and her father is the legendary film director Roman Polanski.
Morgane has been aware of her parents' fame, and her father's embattled life, for as long as she can remember. "I've had radar on in my head since age zero," she admits. "I'm protective, sometimes too much so." Still, her upbringing chez Polanski was relatively quiet, and the family (which also includes her younger brother, Elvis) remains extremely tight-knit. "I have such a close relationship with my dad," she says. "When I was a kid, he'd wake me up for school every morning at 7, and we would do exercises together, like sit-ups and stuff like that, for 15 minutes. And he would bring me to school—every single day—until I was so old it was embarrassing. I loved it." At night before bed, he would sometimes tell her stories of his own childhood in World War II–era Poland, when he escaped Nazi capture by pretending to be Catholic (his parents were not so lucky). "Even now, there are certain things that make him sad," Morgane says. "When we have leftover food, even just bread, I can tell he feels weird about throwing it away. We know that we are fortunate."
Morgane caught the acting bug early—at age four, to be exact, when she accompanied her father to Vienna, where he was directing a musical adaptation of The Fearless Vampire Killers. "It was all in German, which I can't even understand, but I was there for five months and I saw every rehearsal from scratch," she says. "I told my dad, 'This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.' " Her parents were less easily convinced: They insisted that she finish high school, apply to drama school, and study her craft before starting a career. "I did a few little things in my father's movies, but mostly I wasn't allowed," she adds. "My mom didn't even want me to pursue acting. I had good grades in school, and she would say, 'You're too smart to be an actress!' "
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Hair: Peter Gray for Wella Professionals; makeup: Linda Gradin for Giorgio Armani Beauty; manicure: Tracylee for Dior Vernis; prop styling: Todd Wiggins.
Carrying the Polanski name had its challenges too. "It used to be that if someone mentioned my family, I would automatically write them off," says Morgane. "I would even get offended if people said my whole name. I would say, 'I'm Morgane,' and they would say, 'Morgane what?' And I would say, 'Isn't Morgane enough?' " Her hypervigilance mellowed when she transferred from public school to an international school in Paris at age 15. "The kids there had lived in every country around the world, and they were so open-minded. They didn't give a damn who was who or what was what. It opened me up, and I stopped feeling like I had to defend myself."
At 17, Morgane dutifully applied to drama programs and was accepted at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After completing her degree last year, she immediately threw herself into the auditioning process. "I was like, 'Finally! My life can start now!' " she recalls. Before long, she was cast in Vikings, the historical-drama series currently in its third season on the History channel, playing Princess Gisla of France, the great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. It's her first major role in an international production and is, as she describes it, "badass—my first day of shooting was with 300 extras in a church." Of course, she's not deaf to the irony of being cast as royalty. "On the set, people kept calling me 'Princess,' and I was like, 'Don't say that!' Because all my life, my parents taught me not to be a princess," she says, grinning. "They made sure I knew what is real and what is not."
Her budding career aside, Morgane is also basking in the fresh glow of newly minted adulthood. Like many other early 20-somethings, she shares a small apartment with a high school friend—near Hampstead Heath, in northern London—and spends her weekends going to yoga and hanging out in pubs. When it comes to style, she has inherited her mother's bed-headed Parisian glamour—and deftly infuses her own touches of London rock 'n' roll. "I wear a lot of vintage pieces that I find in shops around my neighborhood. I'm talking real vintage, not commercial stuff," she says. "For Christmas, my mom gave me these big boots from Saint Laurent with the little silver cap on the toe. So if anybody bothers me, I can just give them a good kick."
This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of Harper's BAZAAR.
