Anna Kendrick explains how she got here
You may have first discovered her thanks to her role in the Twilight series, or become familiar with her work when she landed the leading role of Beca in Pitch Perfect, but Anna Kendrick has been performing since she was a toddler. She landed her first starring role aged just 13 in the Broadway musical High Society, and has been working consistently ever since.
Kendrick’s portfolio of work features numerous comedies and musicals, but the Hollywood regular is equally at home when tackling weightier, more dramatic roles; she landed an Oscar-nomination for her scene-stealing turn as an ambitious college student in 2009’s Up in the Air, and her potent performance in 2018’s A Simple Favour was widely praised.
Now, Kendrick is stepping behind the camera for Woman of the Hour. In her directorial debut, Kendrick explores the strange true story of Rodney Alcala, an American serial killer active in the 1970s, who appeared on the popular TV programme The Dating Game while in the midst of his killing spree. As well as directing, Kendrick also stars as Cheryl Bradshaw, the woman Alcala won a date with.
We caught up with Kendrick to discuss her career to date.
“I found my love of performing…
…young enough to have started driving my parents insane by the time I was in kindergarten! I was always the smallest kid in class. Throughout my entire childhood, everyone told me, ‘When you’re older, you’ll appreciate that you look young’, but when you’re a child, that’s the worst possible thing. I felt like I had to find a way to feel seen and to take up space in the world, and deciding that I was going to learn to perform seemed like the best way for me to do that at that age. Apparently it never left, because I’m still doing it today!”
“The project that changed my life is…
Camp, the very first film I ever made. The director, Todd Graff, really became like family, and I felt very looked after by him. There was also a real invitation on that set for the actors to learn as much as they wanted to know about making a movie. It was really in contrast to a lot of film sets I ended up on later in life, where there can be gatekeeping around how the movie's actually getting made. The attitude can be, ‘You do your little acting thing, and let the adults worry about the movie getting made.’ I am very grateful that the first film set I was ever on felt like there was an emphasis on educating yourself and answering questions. It really showed that film-making is a collaboration.”
“The role I’m most proud of is…
...impossible to choose, but when I got the call that I was hired for Into the Woods, I think that's the only time I've booked a job and actually just burst into tears on the street. It was one of those jobs where I thought, ‘This isn’t my strongest vocal range, and nobody will think of me playing Cinderella, of all people.’ But I kept being dragged back again and again for auditions and I just thought, ‘Will this ever happen?’ But it did and I was so thankful. Sondheim's music is so difficult, but it's really rewarding. Every day I went to set and was like, wow, I’m working with the absolute masters of their craft. I couldn’t believe I was in their company.”
“The project I could talk about forever is…
...Woman of the Hour, because I just want to talk about the composers and the costume designers and every single actor and how wonderful they all were. This woman named Bonnie showed up to play the waitress in the tiki bar scene, and I sprung it on her that morning that I changed the scene and she had to play something in a very subtle way. And she just showed up and did it, and was perfect. I would have been so screwed if she couldn't have executed that very specific moment perfectly. I do feel like an annoying proud mom when it comes to this film.”
“I deal with fame by…
...being a couch potato of the highest order! But I also have always found that I can mostly move around without an issue just because, frankly, I’m shorter than most people realise. I'm so incognito when I have a baseball hat on – nobody really notices me, it's a real luxury. There are times where I've hung out with actors who are really tall, and I'm like, ‘I would go to you in a crowd anyway, because you're this striking-looking person who is seven feet tall, and then I realise you’re that guy from that thing.’ Being recognised isn’t such a problem for me, I’m happy to report.”
“The best piece of advice in this industry is…
...one I don’t always follow, but generally I always think that if it's not a ‘hell yes’, it's a ‘no’. It's hard to follow that advice sometimes, but I try to remember that when I'm waffling about some project that I'm not really passionate about it, I'm just going to be miserable the entire time when filming it.”
“I was drawn to Woman of the Hour because…
...I’d actually been attached to the script as an actor for a little while beforehand. I was really delighted and surprised by how emotional the writing was, and was excited for the project. But as so often happens in Hollywood, things started to slow down and the film was taking a long time to get off the ground, and we couldn’t find a director.
"I started to feel really heartsick about the idea of somebody else coming in and telling me what the movie was. This tiny part of me started to look at different drafts of the script and think, ‘If it were up to me, this is how I would play that scene.’ Or, ‘Maybe I'd take that piece from that draft and that piece from the other draft and kind of Frankenstein my perfect version of the movie together.’ I wasn’t looking to go into directing – it was absolutely the farthest thing from my mind – but it was something I started to really lean into."
“Being a director for the first time…
...I loved it. There were days where I felt like I was just doing my best impression of someone who wasn't in a blind panic – but I adored it, as I worked with such talented people. I remember talking to the production designer and the costume designers and saying, ‘I know there are times where we’re really going to lean into the fact it was the '70s and have fun with it’, but I really hope Woman of the Hour feels timeless. There were certainly things in the movie where I didn't want it to feel really dated or really of its time. There are elements of the movie that are lifted from my life. I think that there are moments where I think about the Me Too movement; I hope everyone's aware of how easy it would be for us to go back to time before that happened. I wanted to have that real threat of danger in the air, and that’s certainly not something relegated to the '70s.”
“Next up on my bucket list…
...I’ve been half joking, but now I’ve done this, I would love to direct a musical. It does feel like I would need more experience under my belt. Directing musicals is really complicated, particularly if you want to make a good one. I geek out watching movie musicals. The previews for Matilda were coming out when we were wrapping up making Woman of the Hour and I was obsessively watching all the footage. I have joked about remaking Newsies, which is a terrible idea, because if you're someone like me, you think it's a masterpiece and it shouldn't be touched, and if you're almost anyone else, it was a critical and commercial failure. As much as I love that movie, I don’t think that’s something anybody actually wants!”
'Woman of the Hour' is available to watch now on Netflix.
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