The movie Hailee Steinfeld would watch forever: “It still never gets old”
For several decades, Hollywood movie makers have been convinced that the most glamorous job you can possibly have is that of a magazine editor in New York, despite the fact that the reality of that job is 16 hour days, constant stress, $25 flat whites and existing in a glass-walled meeting room with HR people who say things like ‘we don’t believe in flexible working here’.
Nevertheless, countless youngsters dream of it, just like Hailee Steinfeld did before she was a movie star, and that’s because her favourite film is the 2004 Jennifer Garner comedy 13 Going on 30, in which a 1980s teenage girl dreams of a life in which she can be popular and carefree and flirty by becoming a magazine editor, despite the fact none of those traits can be applied to the post holder. Hey presto, after getting shut in a cupboard and bullied, she wakes up 20 years later with a Fifth Avenue apartment and one of those jobs that people seemed to have in New York at the start of the century that just involved hailing taxis and carrying shopping bags.
To a generation of fairly generic and superficial children, it evidently provided some kind of escapism and so became inexplicably popular and made Garner a much bigger star than she was already. It has endured long enough that more than 20 years later, it is also now a stage musical in the UK, and in its defence, the movie soundtrack is full of absolute bangers like Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and ‘Burning Down the House’ by Talking Heads, so that’s something.
Steinfeld is evidently a massive fan as well, and when asked by Glamour what her favourite rom-com is, she came ready with her response: “It’s 13 Going on 30. I’ve seen it so many times at this point, and it still never gets old; that’s when you know”.
Thankfully for film fans, she might be a fan of such frothy nonsense, but she’s concerning herself with making much more interesting fare like this year’s immense vampire mash-up Sinners, without doubt one of the best films of 2025 and a shoe-in to get some award season attention when March rolls around. In fact, she made a lot of people happy last week when she dressed up for Halloween as her character from the film, Mary, who is a feisty, vengeance-filled, scorned ex-wife with a penchant for drinking and eventually biting people in the neck rather messily.
She’s one of the many highlights of the Ryan Coogler-directed horror satire, which features two equally impressive performances by one actor in Michael B Jordan, and also one of the most memorable musical scenes in recent cinema, which we won’t spoil, but you need to see!
Steinfeld has been making music herself for years with a successful pop career at the same time as acting, but more recently has focused on the big and small screens, with acclaimed turns in the lesbian drama Dickinson and the all-female superhero movie The Marvels alongside Brie Larson.
Honestly, the world of comic book adaptations is where she is making some serious bank, because she not only voices Marvel Zombies, but also the highly-rated animated series Arcane. Plus, she is the voice of Gwen in the fantastic Spider-verse trilogy, the last of which is due out in 2027. Safe to say, she has found the glamour she was looking forward to just in a more suitable post.
