The movie that changed Hailee Steinfeld’s life: “When I gave it the time of day”
Not every child actor goes on to find success in later life, but Hailee Steinfeld isn’t most child actors, capturing the world’s attention at just 14, when she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit, and since then, she’s gone on to become a pop culture icon.
Spanning both movies and music, she’s found incredible success all before her 30th birthday, and one of her earliest career bests as a young woman was the 2016 coming-of-age drama The Edge of Seventeen. She played Nadine, a teenager struggling with all the usual age-related stuff, whose life is made infinitely worse when her best friend begins dating her older brother, with her performance receiving rave reviews across the board and even landing her a Golden Globe nomination, the first of her promising career.
Reading that description, you might be surprised that major award bodies took a teen drama like The Edge of Seventeen seriously, as they don’t usually do well at ceremonies like the Golden Globes, and if you thought this, then don’t feel too bad, because Steinfeld also didn’t hold the film in high regard before she agreed to do it.
“I am so guilty of having judged the book by its cover,” she told W magazine, “I remember the first time reading it, I in no way felt like this was a teenage movie or a high school movie. It’s a movie about what being a teenager really feels like today. And it was sort of being talked about between my agents. When I gave it the time of day and read the script, it changed my life.”
Steinfeld recalled worrying about “backpedalling” in her career, about to turn 20, feeling that a so-called ‘teen’ movie was behind her, figuratively and literally; moreover, she’d been on a relatively poor run of form up to this point (with the notable exception of Pitch Perfect 2) and felt like she needed a winner.
The former child stars she idolised had all made the leap to more ‘adult’ projects at her age, so you can understand why something that was apparently aimed at a younger audience wouldn’t appeal to her.
Luckily for her, everybody else cottoned on that this was more than just another teen movie. The Edge of Seventeen has real depth to it, thanks in part to director Kelly Fremon Craig’s excellent script, and Steinfeld gives an outstanding lead performance, backed up by Woody Harrelson as her teacher/mentor and Haley Lu Richardson as her best friend.
Even after all the success he has enjoyed in the years since, she still considers Nadine one of her favourite roles, for the character not only surprised her with hidden depth, but also provided a launchpad to take on more intricate and mature roles.
Without The Edge of Seventeen, we might not have gotten her fun performance in Sinners, and that would have been a crying shame.
