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Hailee Steinfeld Sets the Record Straight on That Uncanny Harry Styles Meme: “Literally, Why?!”

What drew you into Nadine in the first place?
The fact that this character is so complex. The first thing is if I can master what this character feels — the 720 emotions in four minutes — I will feel like I’ve accomplished something. And the thought of playing a character in a story that is so honest and so real to what being a teenager really feels like today is also of complete interest to me.

It’s not just her dealing with adolescence, either. She’s dealing with grief. How did you interpret the grief she was going through and use it for your performance?
Well, when you think of how you first see Nadine, she’s not smiling. She doesn’t smile often until the end of the film when she finds what she’s been missing this whole time. That’s what she lost at the beginning of the film. Having shot that pretty early on . . . knowing something like that happened in someone’s life, feeling like there is always going to be something missing; the reminder of that — acting in some of these scenes, feeling again like it was the end of the world, and then again on top of that remembering that form of loss that happened a couple years ago in this person’s life — it just took you that much further.

And you don’t really hear that much about her grief, not for a bulk of the film.
Right, but it’s there, and you can feel it.

This must have been a fresh role for you, right? It wasn’t that long ago that you were in the same place. Can you paint a picture of yourself in this space that Nadine was in?
I’m trying to think of where I was physically, actually. I don’t even remember. I was trying not to be awkward. That’s for sure. I don’t know, I think I was just masking everything I was feeling. This character feels a lot better than I was. Playing this character actually gave me the opportunity to be a teenager, to figure stuff out, and freak out.

How did you navigate through the teenage misbehavior in this? There was plenty of drinking and sex and other adult themes.
One thing that is cool about this movie is there is no real, shy approach to anything: The language. What you do when your parents aren’t home. When you send a text to a guy that puts you in an awkward position. All that stuff is real and it happens. And again, like you said, it’s important to depict these things. To not beat around the bush. It’s real, and there is no way around it in reality. It was one of things I loved about being a part of this movie — on all fronts, being a part of a real story. Continue reading “Hailee Steinfeld Sets the Record Straight on That Uncanny Harry Styles Meme: “Literally, Why?!””

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Interview: Hailee Steinfeld worked through some adolescent angst in ‘The Edge of Seventeen’

Maybe you’ve seen trailers for “The Edge of Seventeen,” a coming-of-age high school movie starring Hailee Steinfeld. The clips hint at the story of an overly dramatic teenager convinced she has it worse than anybody, constantly at the mercy of her incompetent mother and popular older brother. But, refreshingly, there’s more to it than that.

“I asked one of my friends the other day, ‘What do you think the movie is about?’ ” Steinfeld said. “Obviously, there are trailers out, and I’m curious as to what they’ve put together. And they’re so spot-on with what is being promoted, but it’s so much more than what that is, and I think that’s what’s special about this movie. Yeah, it’s a universal-themed movie, but there are so many things in it.”

Steinfeld plays Nadine, an awkward, sarcastic teen who feels like she’s on the outside of adolescence, save for her best friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). But when Krista starts dating Nadine’s brother, Darian (Blake Jenner), it puts stress on a family already struggling with the death of Nadine’s father.

Not as light and frothy as the trailers would have you believe.

But then, Steinfeld hasn’t had the typical 19-year-old actor’s career. At 14, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her first role in a feature film, playing Mattie Ross in the Coen brothers’ remake of “True Grit.” To pursue acting more seriously, Steinfeld transitioned to homeschooling in the sixth grade, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a wealth of experiences to draw from to play Nadine.

“Once I had left school, people my age and adults were saying, ‘Oh, you bypassed [adolescent awkwardness] because you’re at home,’ ’’ Steinfeld said. “But I not only went through those experiences in school [prior to beginning homeschooling], but we still go through them regardless of whether we are in [school] or not, or where we’re from or what we do or who we are.”

Just from her few months at the beginning of sixth grade, Steinfeld was able to recall a number of experiences that helped her relate to Nadine’s angst. A classmate purposely smacking books out of her arms in the hallway, receiving prank calls or getting made fun of for being oblivious to Juicy Couture all quickly came to mind. Continue reading “Interview: Hailee Steinfeld worked through some adolescent angst in ‘The Edge of Seventeen’”