Starring Barry Keoghan, Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike, Saltburn is the movie hit of the season after opening to critical acclaim.
The film, which premiered at the London Film Festival, is being released The Telegraphled by a director with a 'keen eye for outrage', Emerald Fennell.
Fennell, the Oscar-winning director of Promising Young Woman, was born in Hammersmith, west London, to a jewelery maker and Old Etonian father, Theo, and author mother, Louise.
The 36-year-old mother-of-one attended the £39,000-a-year school at Marlborough College, the same Wiltshire institution that educated the Princess of Wales, before studying English at Greyfriars at the University of Oxford. There she picked up an agent who had seen her acting in student plays.
It's perhaps no surprise that her second feature satirizes the upper classes, as she has previously admitted to being “hyper-aware” of her own “grotesque privilege.”
Emerald Fennell, 36 (pictured with her Oscar for Best Screenplay in April 2021) is the director of the aristocratic satire Saltburn
Her father Theo founded his jewelry company in 1982 and built a following of close friends and customers.
Sir Elton John is said to have dropped £200,000 on one visit to his shop, plus party animals including actresses Dame Joan Collins and Liz Hurley and Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood.
However, she says she was not named after the gemstone, but after 1930s hostess Lady Maud 'Emerald' Cunard. In a curious foreshadowing of Emerald's The Crown role, she was infamous for encouraging her friend Wallis Simpson and Edward, Prince of Wales.
Emerald's mother Louise is a novelist and her books include Fame Game and Dead Rich.
Family friends include Sir Elton John, The Duchess of York, Dame Joan and Lord Lloyd-Webber.
Saltburn, an aristocratic satire starring Barry Keoghan (left), premiered at the London Film Festival
Emerald is the daughter of jewelery designer and ancient Etonian Theo Fennell and writer Louise Fennell. Her sister Coco is a fashion designer
The writer and director once said of her family: 'I am very aware that part of my happiness was that I had parents who lived in London and who could support me. I have to work very hard, because you have to prove that you have earned the advantage that people like me get.'
Speak with British Vogue in October, Fennell reflected on her silver spoon upbringing, revealing she wanted to go back in time and “slap herself in the face” for the way she behaved as a schoolchild in Marlborough, including sneaking into the bushes to to smoke.
Despite telling the outlet that she felt she might have taken a place at Oxford University from someone “more deserving,” Fennell's work ethic is strong, and in addition to being a star of the small screen, she has also been behind a number of big hits. .
She had background roles in TV dramas Trial & Retribution, New Tricks and Any Human Heart before launching Channel 4 comedy Chickens, alongside The Inbetweeners stars Simon Bird and Joe Thomas.
At the same time, her film roles began to improve, with the 2012 Keira Knightley adaptation of Anna Karenina marking her first major credit.
But it was in 2014 when Emerald shot to fame as boisterous red-headed nurse Patsy Mount in Call The Midwife.
She was originally cast for a one-episode turn in series two, but impressed the creators so much that she was invited to join the cast as a regular for series three. Her character Patsy had a secret relationship with nurse Delia (Kate Lamb).
“If I had known at my audition that there was more than a small walk-on role at stake, I would have suffered from nerves,” she previously revealed.
She was also behind the second series of Killing Eve, following in the footsteps of her friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who left the series to work on the Bond film No Time To Die.
She was clearly having the time of her life, starting with a child having his neck broken in his hospital bed and ending with a gruesome ax murder.
These blood-splattered stories seem like an anomaly born from the imagination of a thoroughly nice woman. “It's interesting, isn't it?” she said in an interview with Weekend Magazine.
“Very interesting, because I often felt like doing that when I was writing Killing Eve, even though I didn't kill anyone to write it!”
The script was a hit: Emerald received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
In addition to screenwriting, Fennell has written a series of novels, which have also earned her critical acclaim.
Her first two books, 2013's Shiverton Hall and its sequel The Creeper (shortlisted for the Waterstones 2014 Children's Book Prize), were written for older children.
Perhaps Fennell's biggest on-screen role was playing Camilla Shand (later Parker Bowles) in the third and fourth series of The Crown.
Fennell's first acting roles include playing Patsy Mount in the BBC period drama Call the Midwife
She is captivating as young Camilla, although critics have dismissed suggestions that she and Prince Charles maintained a relationship for the duration of his marriage to Princess Diana.
The choice to play the role was considered ironic because Emerald's father Theo was friends with Camilla's rival, the late Princess Diana.
He and Louise remain on good terms with the Duchess of York.
In 2020, when Fennell was seven months pregnant, she revealed that her film Promising Young Woman was shot in 23 days so she could complete the project before giving birth.
On the red carpet at the film's premiere, she said: 'We never expected it to come to this. I think what's so moving is people's candor and the conversations it's sparked for a lot of people.”
Ahead of the film's release in 2021, Fennell said in an interview, “I've always wanted to direct. I feel like everything so far has given me the tools to do that – working with a lot of talented people. It's been quite life-changing.
“I started writing books and moved into writing screenplays, and whenever I was on set as an actor, I would actively learn what the director was doing.
'Directing seems to me to be the ultimate way to tell a story, especially if it's something you wrote yourself.'
Following the roaring success of Fennell's first feature film, Saltburn is set to achieve the same dizzying popularity after the film premiered at the London Film Festival to critical acclaim.
During the film's gala premiere, she described the aristocratic satire as a “vampire film.”
“It's about what we do when we're completely in love with something or someone,” she said.
“And I hope it's part of the classical Gothic tradition, where love and hate are very, very close together.”