There are some early-20s milestones that feel cliché enough to fall right into a rom-com: move to a big city, live alone for the first time, spend a night on the town making friends out of strangers. Unless you’re Hailee Steinfeld, though, that timeframe won’t likely include touring with Katy Perry and Charlie Puth or heading to Spain for 24 hours for the MTV EMAs, too. In 2018, of course, Steinfeld can check off all the above—relatable or otherwise—but what I want to know is what’s next for the young star.
“In the New Year, taking time off is important,” Steinfeld tells me shortly into our conversation. It’s a chilly Saturday morning in November, fresh off the first snow of the season, but we’ve found a cozy booth in the restaurant of The Williamsburg Hotel. The actress arrives for our interview wearing faded jeans and a pastel blue thermal, a far cry from the glitter-covered neon looks she wore in Spain. In about an hour, she’ll be decked out in after-hours attire for our December cover shoot, but for now, the multi-hyphenate is makeup-free, hair still wet from the shower, and comfortably settling into the corner of the booth, where she sits with her feet tucked up—sometimes one, sometimes both.
Steinfeld seems to reserve the slightly perched stance for when she speaks about things that excite her most, like performing live on stage for her fans. But those who track Steinfeld’s moves closely—like her nearly 11 million Instagram followers—might say the enthusiastic posture is fitting more generally, given how many exciting projects she has through the end of the year. First, she’s currently filming a TV show (more on that later). Then, it’s the December 14 release of the already critically acclaimed Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated feature for which Steinfeld voices Gwen Stacy.
Finally, it’s Bumblebee, a Transformers prequel, out in theaters December 21. In her second holiday season film debut, the actress portrays Charlie Watson, a somewhat similar lead role to the coming-of-age characters she’s played for most of her career. Think Emily in the second installment of the Pitch Perfect trilogy, who we meet as an awkward, songwriting legacy Barden Bella. Or the quick-witted, hyperbolic, quietly (sometimes not-so-quietly) grieving Nadine in The Edge of Seventeen, a performance that nabbed Steinfeld a Golden Globe nomination.
“There was something about this character,” the actress says of Bumblebee’s Watson, “that I felt was lost but still independent. She’s launched into this world of people she feels don’t see or hear her. Being seen and heard is so important, especially today.”
If you’ve ever listened to Steinfeld’s music, such a sentiment should come as no surprise. Where her onscreen personas have often represented women developing their voices on the brink of adulthood—“It’s just me projecting,” Steinfeld jokes of how her life has
sometimes paralleled her scripted work—her music has been a vehicle for communicating with confidence, the most obvious example being “Love Myself.”
“There was no question that that was going to be my first single,” Steinfeld reflects on the 2015 hit song, “but the night before it came out, I was like, Oh my god. Is it right? Is it not? If anything, it was a perfect reminder that regardless of what anybody says, there’s so much power in being able to say I love myself.”
Judging by the tune’s double platinum status, others agreed. Soon followed the smash hit “Starving” with Grey and Zedd, the power anthem “Most Girls,” and, most recently, “Back to Life,” a dance track tied to the Bumblebee film. An album is the natural next step for Steinfeld’s music career, but that’s not what’s occupying her time at this moment. “I had intentions of putting an album out this year,” Steinfeld says, “and then my show with Apple, Dickinson, came up.”
Dickinson is the reason we find Steinfeld, a California native, making herself at home in Williamsburg. As she tells us, she headed here straight from wrapping her summer concert tours to shoot her first TV series and portray the title character, iconic 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson. “Talk about a fearless, unstoppable woman,” she adds.
Episodic filming is a fresh challenge for Steinfeld, whose credits are almost exclusive to film and music videos, but chances are this experience is not as foreign as the other changes in her life. “I’ve never had this opportunity of living alone in a new city, feeling my way around, and feeling comfortable with that,” she says. Like her post-grad peers who may be focused on beginning their careers,
Steinfeld fills any free time she finds with getting to know her new neighborhood, figuring out transportation, going out with new friends, and even learning to appreciate solo dining. “Part of me was a little depressed, and the other part of me was like, this is awesome,” she says with excitement. I tell her it sounds like she’s mastered this whole new-to–New York thing, and she lights up a bit more.
As Steinfeld’s birthday is this month, I try my very best not to sound like I’m quoting her friend Taylor Swift when I ask how she’s feeling about turning 22. “I don’t have any specific feeling about it,” she replies, calling it kind of a “non-age,” straddled by birthdays that tend to be celebrated with a bit more hoopla, like 21 or 25. “Twenty-one,” though, “taught me a lot about myself.” Among those lessons is to slow down. While Steinfeld says the EMAs were the rose of her year—specifically the trifecta of hosting, performing
her new song, and tying it all to her new film—a lack of time to process it all was the thorn.
To that, and despite Steinfeld’s success, the young adult I meet today is not necessarily someone who’s figured it all out, but who admits “it’s a never-ending process.” What excites her most (at least based on the location of her feet as she speaks) isn’t just working, but learning about everything, from the people who make up her current neighborhood to hobbies she hasn’t had time to hone yet, like photography.
Even her personal style, which she says includes a lot of sweats when she’s filming, is a constant exploration. Of course, it helps to have guidance from Rob Zangardi and Mariel Haenn, the stylist pairing well known for working with industry powerhouses including Jennifer Lopez and Ciara. Together with the duo, Steinfeld’s made showstopping appearances in pieces from the likes of Ralph & Russo, Balmain, and Alexandre Vauthier. “They don’t have any solids nos or don’ts,” she says of her team. “They’re absolutely fearless.”
It’s obvious that Steinfeld appreciates unapologetically bold personalities. We both make an audible ugh of approval when she brings up Ezra Miller’s recent experimental and gender-nonconforming red carpet style on the Fantastic Beasts tour. She loves Kate Moss as someone who “embodies this pure badassery and confidence,” and as a member of Gen Z, Steinfeld connects deeply to her peers whose social activism has earned national attention over the past year and election cycle. “It’s so incredible that I am of a generation that feels empowered enough to speak out and use their voice at a time when anything and everything helps,” she says.
As Steinfeld and I wrap up our talk, I notice that the once nearly empty restaurant has filled up a bit, and out of the corner of my eye, I spot a couple patrons craning their necks to identify the brunette opposite me. I become even further impressed by her appreciation for dining alone and think to mention it but don’t want to keep her. If there’s anything I’m sure of following this talk, it’s that Steinfeld is unstoppable: in her drive, in her talents, and likely in her scheduling. She’d have to be, with her kind of calendar.
Even if her feelings about 22 are lukewarm, the future’s looking incredibly bright in Steinfeld’s eyes. “I do feel like I’m heading into the best year of my life,” she says. Dickinson is set to wrap filming in January, and she has no immediate plans to follow. Whether that means she focuses on the more universal early-20s achievements or aims for the less relatable ones (Another Oscar-nominated film? The release of her first album?), she’ll be firing on all cylinders. “I feel like I have so much in me right now, and I want to keep going and going,” she says. “And I will.”