From film industry bustle to West Wight peace - Meet our new columnist
In fact, for most of my life, the Isle of Wight existed only as a vague holiday postcard in my mind – somewhere I went as a child, like so many others – not somewhere they stayed.
Yet somehow, slowly and then all at once, it became home.
My life before the Island was defined by movement.
For 25 years I’ve assisted the great and the good of the film industry all over the world, from directors like Alfonso Cuaron and Peter Howitt to actors Robert Downey Jnr, Gerard Butler, and Tom Holland – everything operated on urgency.
I built my career in environments where time was always short and expectations were always high.
There was excitement and drama in that pace, a constant sense of possibility and glamour but also a quiet exhaustion that crept in unnoticed.
When you live surrounded by noise, you rarely realise how loud it actually is until it stops.
The shift towards the Isle of Wight wasn’t a single dramatic decision.
It was a series of small moments – the kind that only make sense in hindsight. A visit that felt unusually calming. A walk where no one seemed in a hurry.
Space to think.
So, I bought a small cottage, a place to escape the madness of my life.
Then my parents moved here, so I spent more and more time on the Island.
Jules Baker-Smith (Image: Jules Baker-Smith)
My father got terminally sick in 2020 so I moved over full-time to care for him and support my mother, never really considering I would never leave.
After my father passed and was buried here, my mother wanted to stay to be near him and I could think of nowhere better to be.
Professionally, I worried at first that stepping away from the mainland might mean stepping away from opportunity. Instead, the opposite happened.
I met a like-minded person here and we started our own film production company, The Isle Film Company. We are only 18 months in and doing really well.
I realised this Island could fulfil another lifelong dream of creating my own horse sanctuary, at the same time helping to support the equine community on the Island.
This has now begun, thanks to this wonderful place.
Of course, there are challenges, leaving your friends behind and hoping they will visit, trying to make new friends, which has taken time.
It was the biggest hurdle of starting life again here – I am single, an only child, with no children – I love all of that but where some of my friends with children going to school gave them an immediate community, that wasn’t the case for me.
Added to that I was also grieving, with zero interest in people – so after living here for four years I had no friends.
But gradually things changed, thanks mainly to my business partner Lisa Henry, the most social person ever, and the Freshwater Bathers, my sea swimming friends.
The cost of travelling to the mainland is a big subject for many as the residents' discount is still too small. It can make maintaining any semblance of your former life challenging – but so far it’s just about manageable. More on that topic another time.
I love the fact I can’t get lost, for someone who is directionally dyslexic, it’s a wonderful comfort.
The peace of West Wight has helped heal me in many ways, that make me so thankful to have found this place.
