The two actors Hailee Steinfeld has always wanted to emulate: “They’ve maintained such amazing careers”
Growing up in the film industry can be a challenge, as roles quickly dry up for young stars who can no longer play youthful roles, making learning how to be taken seriously difficult, but Hailee Steinfeld is one of those rare young actors who hasn’t experienced a drop off.
Steinfeld introduced herself to Hollywood with her breakout performance in the Coen brothers’ reinterpretation of True Grit, but she’s managed to keep taking on roles that showcase her range.
Although the actor has claimed that the coming-of-age dramedy The Edge of Seventeen is the film that she is most proud of, her career is stacked with more memorable titles than most performers twice her age. Despite being less than 30 years old, Steinfeld joined the animated Marvel universe with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, led her own prestige television show with Dickinson, did her own singing in the Pitch Perfect franchise, and has been earning Oscar buzz this year for her performance in Sinners.
While she has found a unique path to success, even she would acknowledge that there were trailblazers who set precedents for what she is now doing, and in an interview with Indie London, Steinfeld admitted that she admires Natalie Portman and Diane Lane in this vein, pointing out, “They’ve maintained such amazing careers since they were my age”.
Lane and Portman are two actresses who have been part of the industry for so long that it’s easy to forget that they were once child stars, with the former acting on stage since she was in elementary school, but it was her unforgettable performance in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, two SE Hinton adaptations directed by Francis Ford Coppola, where she proved herself as someone to watch.
Despite co-stars that included Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and C Thomas Howell, Lane had memorable parts in both Coppola films, each of which are remembered as cult classics, and while she has spent many years playing supporting roles in everything from Lonesome Dove to Streets of Fire, she eventually proved herself to be a true leading lady when Unfaithful earned her a much-deserved Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actress’.
Portman had a similar breakout role to Steinfeld’s in True Grit, as she got her start in a hyper-violent genre film featuring A-list actors, and it was this spunky, badass role in Léon: The Professional that showed she could carry the weight of a dramatic film on her shoulders, even if she would eventually show a softer side in romantic dramas like Beautiful Girls and Garden State.
Portman was acclaimed from a young age, even younger than Steinfeld is now, when she earned a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ nomination for Closer, and became one of the youngest ‘Best Actress’ winners ever when she took home the trophy for Black Swan.
While there’s always the possibility that Steinfeld will cross paths with Lane, there’s a real possibility that she and Portman could be co-starring together in the near future, as the latter recently made her return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe when she reprised her role as Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder, and Steinfeld made her MCU debut in the miniseries Hawkeye. While there hasn’t been any confirmation that either will be back in the series anytime soon, the cross-universe events in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars could end up throwing them before the same greenscreens.
