The actor who inspired Hailee Steinfeld’s career: “It made me think anything is possible”
While some actors wait their whole lives to earn an Oscar nomination, there are a lucky few who achieve the prestigious feat before they even reach adulthood, which was the case for Hailee Steinfeld, who wound up nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ when she was just 14 after appearing in her first feature film, True Grit.
The actor has since gone on to release various albums and star in a whole host of movies and TV shows, most recently garnering acclaim for her performance in the horror film Sinners. She’s done everything from comedies like The Edge of Seventeen and Pitch Perfect 2 to animated superhero movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, clearly not against giving any genre a go, to even taking on the challenging role of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson for Apple TV+’s Dickinson.
The actor is one of the rare few who headed straight for awards acclaim before she had even found her feet in the industry, and her nomination from the Academy makes her one of the youngest ever in the category, so naturally, when she looks back on this moment in her career, she still can’t quite believe it, because it felt like a “full circle moment” for her.
Before Steinfeld had become an actor, she’d been brought up on the classics, and one of her favourites at a young age was Peter Bogdanovich’s touching comedy-drama Paper Moon from 1973.
The film takes a journey across the United States as a crook is instructed to deliver a young girl to her aunt following her mother’s funeral, and while the pair may or may not be father and daughter, the similarities between them make it pretty clear, and, incredibly, they’re played by real-life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal.
It’s a charmingly unconventional tale of family, and the nine-year-old O’Neal gives an unforgettable performance as the effortlessly witty and spunky child, bitingly delivering, “I want my 200 dollars!!” in a memorable diner scene. Unsurprisingly, O’Neal was nominated for an Oscar for the part, making her the youngest ever nominee, not just in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category, but in any category, all across.
She doubly made Oscar history when she actually won the prize, beating out Linda Blair, who was nomnated for The Exorcist, and even Madeline Kahn for her role in Paper Moon, so when Steinfeld found out that this performance had won an Oscar, it inspired her to dream big, because if a child could win an Academy Award, she need not think it impossible for herself too, and she told People, just as much.
“What a full circle moment. I was around seven or either when I watched Paper Moon for the first time, and it made me think anything is possible. The fact that it all happened when it did, I couldn’t have dreamt that up,” she gushed.
So, just a few years later, she joined the roster of the youngest ever Oscar nominees, and while she didn’t win, losing out to Melissa Leo for The Fighter, Steinfeld knew her career was off to a good start.
