Anna
Kendrick was born on August 9, 1985, in Portland, Maine. Her first stab
at acting was a fruitful disappointment. In answer to a casting call
for the Broadway adaptation of Annie, Kendrick and her family nabbed a New York agent to secure an audition. The Annie role didn’t work out, but the agent landed Kendrick the role of Dinah in the Broadway musical High Society.
Kendrick garnered a Tony nomination for the role (she was the second
youngest ever to do so). The stage actress made her film debut in Camp,
a role that nabbed her the Best Debut nod from the Independent Spirit
Awards. The Spirit Awards later honored her with a Best Supporting
Actress nomination for her turn as the live-wire debater in Rocket Science. It was this performance that caught the attention of Juno director
Jason Reitman, who began to cater a role in his latest movie
specifically for the young starlet. So in between her work basking in
the Twilight series, Kendrick was going toe-to-toe with George Clooney in Up in the Air, playing a newbie corporate downsizer who develops an efficient way to layoff people online.
AskMen.com : In Up in the Air,
you play the new girl at the office who's in way over her head. When
you came on the set, did you feel like the new girl who's in way over
her head amidst veterans like George Clooney and Vera Farmiga? Anna Kendrick :
I think I absolutely connected to the idea that Natalie is trying to
sit at the grown-up table and constantly trying to prove that she’s
good enough to kind of outperform expectations about her age and
gender. That was an easy thing to relate to on this film. I’ve worked
with phenomenally talented people, but predominantly young actors. I
felt like I was trying to sit at the grown-up table and [was] trying to
keep up. That pressure was definitely there.
AM : Was it a learning experience? AK :
The scene that I have with George and Vera [Farmiga],
where we’re talking about the expectations that we have for our lives
-- it was so amazing to get to watch them work. I felt like I was
watching Cirque du Soleil.
AM : Apparently Reitman wrote this character thinking of you. AK :
I wish he told me that because I thought he absolutely despised me.
AM : Why did you think that? AK :
He told me that he was trying to stay very reserved and very
professional. He thought giving away that he had me in mind would be
putting too much pressure on me. It would be like: “Hey, I wrote this
for you, so don’t screw it up”. So he was trying to just stay very
professional, but it came across as a little cold. So I thought, I’ve
done nothing to impress him; he hates me. So when I got offered the
job, I was thinking this makes no sense. I’m not this famous person
where the studio would want me. The director clearly hates me. Then I
had lunch with him, and he told me all of this. That definitely made me
a lot more comfortable. We still debate about whether he should or
shouldn’t have maintained the professionalism or let me know that he
was rooting for me. I don’t think he should have told me that he wrote
it for me, but maybe not making me feel like I was unwelcome would have
been nice.
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