Anna Kendrick Breaks Down Her Career, from 'Pitch Perfect' to 'Twilight' | Vanity Fair

I realized that the way that I'm gonna try to think about it in the future is actually not so much about ticking boxes of like this kind of movie or this kind of character because the more that I've been able to work and work with really incredible people the people that really leave an impression on me are the people who seem happy people who are working and loving their work and also loving the life that they live and they've found this balance I'm Anna Kendrick and this is the timeline of my career [Music] so camp is the first movie I ever did well I actually got involved in that project because the director was cousins of Randy Graf who was in the Broadway show that I did when I was 12 years old so she was like if you're looking for a girl who could play my character in that film the creepiest most obsessive weirdo of all time I've got just the girl for you the blessing about that film was that it was because it was non-union it was everybody's first film so it was a lot of anxiety but we had the blessing of like no cast member knew anything so you were allowed to ask questions and be an idiot and not feel quite as much shame and at the time I mean you couldn't tell me that these people were not my family and that we were not bought it for life like this was the most significant experience I had ever had and when I left I was sobbing it was like a brick I cut my hair I did like all the breakup stuff I was inconsolable like I'm used to it now but it is a really bizarre like all-consuming experience and that's why you get these kind of heightened things and that's why people fall in love with each other and that's like Christian Bale yells at his teepee and it's all just part of like what happens you just go slightly crazy you're just pinning my name's 15 she's got a great spy huh I'm just good by the way hey you're from Arizona right yeah aren't people from Arizona suppose be like really tan I auditioned for Twilight because Catherine Hardwicke had seen me in a film at Sundance called rocket science and asking you come in an audition and I really thought it was such a blow off audition I just thought like well you know do as well as I can so that the casting director like thinks of me for other stuff and I actually saw my friend Mae Whitman at that audition and we were both like what are we doing here like we're obviously not gonna be this like mean girl character yeah like got that job which was I mean truly like such a shock the first movie we filmed in Portland Oregon and I just remember being so cold and miserable and I just remember my converse being completely soaked through and feeling like you know this is a really great group of people and I'm sure that we would be friends in a different time but I want to murder everyone although it was also kind of bonding there was like something about it that was like you know like you go through like some trauma event like you imagine like people who survive like a hostage situation I mean you're kind of bonded for life the second movie for whatever reason like the weather wasn't quite as intense and that's sort of I think where we all got to know each other a little bit better I was shooting up in the air by the time that we were making that second movie so they rearranged a lot of scheduling stuff because it would have been a real dick move but you know they have legally they had the right to stop me from doing up in the air so shout out to those guys and wear those it's supposed to like draw our answers were things like astronaut president or in my case a princess when we were 10 they asked again we answered rock star cowboy or in my case a gold medalist but now that we've grown up they want a serious answer they all sort of went into one at some point because my whole job was just to go like this family of very pale people who we never see eating they're really weird right anyway what did I do in the third movie oh I did the graduation speech in the third movie that's right and I remember thinking like oh why did they make my character the valedictorian like she's very obviously not a good student um but you know they just wanted me to like have something to do because it was a speech I just like did what was scripted and I swear that scene people are like you know that speech that you give in that third movie it's really sweet it's really moving and I swear to god I'm like the thing that is happening is you are looking at Kristen Stewart's reaction to that speech and that is the thing that is moving you because I was like I ideal right but I was just kind of like I don't know I'm reading this speech and then it comes to Kristen she's so moved because she's so talented that I was like oh people are like that speech is so amazing I'm like no it's just her she's great so I was in the fourth okay it was just like a wedding scene where again I'm like movie people are so weird and you're in like just half frozen mud in what was the final scene of filming for for everybody you know it's like I get to come in and you know work for a week or two and everybody else has been like giving their their blood sweat and tears to the project for months I show up at the end and I'm like guys we did it it's over it's so funny never want to get married nope never want kids not a chance ever never that so bizarre yes so up in the air was you know a script I got it was like this really high profile thing that's amazing part opposite George Clooney and well I'll go in and I'll do my best and you know they'll give it to somebody more famous I remember my agents calling me a couple days after my audition and being like okay we're pretty sure that an offer is coming in and I was like you were in the room because I was just totally convinced that I've left no impression and basically spent the first weeks of filming thinking like I'll just enjoy this and you know I'll be like the is it Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future there's like a funny story that like Italy they hired somebody Clooney was so classy man I know that everybody describes him that way but it's just you know on my first day he was like so do you get nervous I get nervous in retrospect no he doesn't but it was such a generous thing to say to me and I believed it at the time and I was like oh we're the same which is the whole point you know he's so good at disarming people and trying to get them to forget that he's international movie star George Clooney I just couldn't have asked for a better I guess like Sherpa you know in in that situation to just see like how does somebody handle themselves you know everybody's looking to them for the tone and you know the the kind of manner in which we're all going to treat each other I was doing a one of my first interviews about the movie with Jason Bateman and he made you know Anunnaki was comment to me about how I might need to be picking out a nice dress in the spring it just totally threw me that anybody would genuinely be thinking that so it felt like a little funny joke guess in retrospect like of course I wish I could have just accepted that and seen it for what it was which was just a compliment that anybody would be saying that I'm kind of glad that I at least had the presence of mind at the time to go Anna you might look back on this time and get mad at yourself for not enjoying it more so I want you to actually take in like how overwhelming this is and how much pressure there is and how you have no idea how to navigate it and that's it okay it kind of lets me at least kind of let my younger self off the hook a little bit yes it is I just don't see the value in it you know we should really talk about is you have trash on your floor and there's no reason I mean you know at least have a bag in the back to put the trash in your girlfriend cheated on you we don't have to talk about it we don't have to 15:50 was like the first time that I felt like I kind of pulled a little bait-and-switch on someone because on paper she felt really similar to my character for Albany ER and I knew that that was like why they hired me I just wanted to make her like really soft you know natalie and up in the air is like trying so hard to be a hard-ass and this wasn't a far cry from that just on the page I did worry that I would get there and that um Jonathan Levine the director would like tell me to basically play it more like my character prompt in the air and he I feel like is this weird um like Jedi Master where like it doesn't feel like he's doing a lot and then every movie he does is like why does this have this much heart you know things like warm bodies or the long shot those movies have no right to make me cry yeah he just really like didn't shy away from that vulnerability I just broke up with somebody recently yeah 17 years old scandal that's not true who told you wallets duh so Scott pool members of the world I just did because I loved Edgar Wright's movies I loved Shawn the dead and I love tapas and he knows this that to this day Hafez is my second favorite film of all time the woman is the first favorite film it's the Hot Fuzz is a close second often when I read a script like the pace at which I can get through a script is a test of like how exciting the movie is to me and there are exceptions to that rule and Scott Walker is one of those exceptions that movie on paper is so bizarre and like there's like nothing to hold on to it's so insane and suddenly there's somebody singing and fighting like video game style but up until that point there's been no indication that it's like a video game movie so why are you fighting how why is he flying why does he have like demon hipster chicks as his backup fighters slash backup singers and actually that was one of the early scenes that I did and I was like you know what I'm just gonna be the audience for a second and be like what is happening explain yourself so that was that was my motivation for that and I was not surprised that it ended up in the movie because I do think that it just lets the audience go okay so this is insane we're all on the same page fantastic oh my god you guys haven't no no no no we never a teacher or Wow yeah that's really and then drinking buddies I didn't receive a single piece of paper the entire time that we were filming there's no paper I would just show up and Joe Swanberg the director would be like we'll just see what happens we'll just like see the scene I go for this hike with Ron Livingston and I and I kiss him and I'm in a relationship with Jake Johnson and just before we started to shoot that scene Joe came over and you know bran and I kind of knew what the scene was about and joking him over and was kind of talking us about it and was like you know and and then you you guys'll kiss at some point and whatever and Ron was like yeah I mean if we kiss if that feels right and Joe was like sure I walked away and I was like wait I think we have to I think we have to kiss for the for them you know certain scenes later to feel right but then I knew that my character wouldn't ever kiss Ron and so I was like oh I have to get Ron to kiss me like the actor and the character I have to get him to kiss me without betraying my character so I did this thing we sat in silence for a long time and I did the thing that's in the movie of going like I'm having a really nervous feeling right now and that he kind of asked me what I'm talking about and then I'm kind of falling all over myself to apologize like oh I've misread this situation and then he ends up kissing me we called cut and Joe was like great do you want to do it again and I was like no cuz it was really nerve-wracking like it felt like the real stakes of when you are miss reading a situation where you want someone to kiss you like it felt that real and alive because like nobody told me how to do it and I started crying like I have really cheated and I really like had to tell my boyfriend now so it was so fun and terrifying like you have all those body responses that you have in real life where like you're the hair on your arm stands up and stuff like that so it was terrifying and the best really impressive soda get down good luck baby got him open all over town strictly you don't play around cover much ground got game by the path I mean every cast member we've all talked about how the thing that got us excited about that movie is Kay cannons writing you know she wrote for 30 rock and this script was the kind of thing that you read and you think you know what it's gonna be it's like okay it's a competition thing it's a college thing we know the beats of this and then the script was so funny and dark and weird and really kind of pushed what was okay say cuz at the time I hadn't sung in film so I just kind of needed to prove and I could sing and I actually brought in a cup and was like I can do this dumb thing like the cup and so they they put that in the movie originally Becca's audition song in the first movie was I'm a little teapot which I still to this day I keep meaning to ask a cannon like how what would that have been how would that have worked the director Jason Moore and I were like going around like collecting cups that we would just see on set to see like what would make the best sound for that scene and we had this little collection of like a dozen cups to try once we actually got to that location and could test them out on that stage well coming back to contribute to it had been several years the funniest part of it to me was going back to rehearsals and you know learning music again learning the dances again all the producers and stuff had this mantra of like well we're a well-oiled machine this time because we're older and wiser and we know you know they're not gonna get into the last-minute changes to all the music and the dancing that we had on the first movie and it was so much worse it was so much more changes like the finale we learned like the weekend before we had to shoot it it was so fun to be back with the cast and also um to be like oh my god it's exactly this is the first one it's even crazier but I mean I guess that's the thing that's the exciting thing that's why you have all the adrenaline is because it's like it might fall apart up until the second that you're actually filming it oh my god magical is Becca hello how beautiful oh thank you yeah the third one again you would think like this time we are gonna lock the music we're gonna lock the choreography before like with weeks to spare and know right up until the last second but but it by that point we were just like yeah but we knew we knew that was gonna happen have a seat make yourself at home [Music] I think into the woods might be the only movie I've ever gotten where I actually cried like cried when I found out that I got the job it's such an iconic show and it just means so much to me and it never even occurred to me that I could play Cinderella when I found out that they were making it to the woods and they asked me to audition I was like Oh for a little read because when you do a stage version of it usually like an adult woman plays Little Red Riding Hood they were like no we're gonna use an actual child for that the idea of playing soft open vulnerable full of heart and full of hope Cinderella you know just kind of blew me away that that Rob Marshall saw that in me cuz Rob is so different from me like there are people that you meet and you're like one brain man and Rob Marshall and I are not that and it's like he's so generous he is so optimistic he's so sees the good in everyone and I'm so yes but um so there was a day where James Corden and I were watching Meryl Streep do last midnight and we were like just overwhelmed with like this sense of people would pay so much money to have the view that we have right now to see Meryl Streep this far away performing last midnight and like we are the idiots who get to just like be here you know this is the kind of thing like you should charge crazy prices for and we just like get to be here yeah that was an exciting day hi oh hey thanks for the percocets what are you doing here he doesn't even like you I mean he's in mourning for me the thing that really stands out to me about cake is basically how it's just one of the all-time great performances from Jennifer Aniston and I even remember when we were doing press for it feeling like she was so humble and she really downplayed everything that she put into that performance like to the point that I was like at press conferences with her like trying to grab all the microphones and be like you wouldn't even know what she did it was incredible their research and the commitment which isn't my place in my business so Jennifer Aniston plays a woman who has lost her son and she's in chronic pain in her body all the time because of an accident that she was in and she's self-medicating and eventually she has these hallucinations about this woman who died who was like the perfect wife and mother and kind of everything that Jennifer Aniston imagines that she's not and I played that character and at first the director and I were kind of debating is she like a supernatural like a real kind of apparition is she she a ghost basically or is she just a hallucination is she just a reflection of Jennifer Aniston's like self-hatred the more that I really watched her prepare I was like yeah this is uh this is just about her inner voice that tells her the worst things you know and it was really interesting to realize like oh I'm not I'm not my own character actually I'm not like playing a character I'm just tethered to Jennifer Aniston's performance and her performance was so good that I just let that like lead me and I was just like a mirror of like her self hatred and I wanted to like shout from the rooftops like how much work she had put into it and how it was just such a gift to watch her work and to basically play a reflection of her performance you just use people I could I went into DreamWorks and they pitched me on the idea of trolls movie and the character of poppy optimistic to the point of being a little crazy a little unhinged and I was like I'm just waiting for you guys to take a breath so I can say yes I was just so excited I've always wanted to do an animated film like that and I just felt like that was such an amazing opportunity to just fall in my lap so after several months of reporting my part they were like what do you think about Justin Timberlake coming on to play branch opposite you and also like maybe being an executive music producer looks like again there's a lot of those crazy situations where like why are you asking my permission as though it was gonna be like oh I don't know I just felt like very lucky to have JT me like come in and well I'm frankly like to be a vocal producer on it you know like alright that point I had recorded for pitch perfect and you know it's usually like a music person and a sound person going like yeah it sounds good and have like you know international recording superstar Justin Timberlake going like why don't you try this riff and like singing it you know into the cans I know the lingo um and then like having me just repeat it was so cool [Music] like Herbst announcement makes sense she wants to reunite the strings so the troll world can be one big party again I was just so excited when they said that they wanted to do a second movie because not only do I love doing the musical element of it where I'm just playing like a little pink character there's something so cathartic about like going into a room and playing this kind of unhinged happy character it feels like like a weird therapeutic exercise like how some people like picture a happy place I'm like I get whatever that thing is I get that from like playing poppy because she's this kind of unfiltered ball of like happiness energy joy and also like I'm not gonna take it from anybody you know it's like she's like my own inner child or something and I get to go and like play with her that's all you heard one big party Stephanie put down the gun I don't want to do this I really do though I think Blake and I had a really similar experience reading the script for a simple favor because we could not put this script down and just like race through it because it was there were so many twists and turns and so much like humor and darkness and there was a lot of like kind of going back and being like is this a drama or a comedy like what is it and that was also the experience on set like Blake and I got to set and basically every day asked each other like what movie are you in because I want to make sure that we're in the same movie cuz I okay I actually said to Paul Feig early on and shooting like most movies you know basically the tone and you know there's onra and you're on kind of a sliding scale of like how big and small are the choices we're gonna be making and with a simple favorite it felt like oh I can just take the knob off and just do whatever I want with it because there's just no rules in this movie it wasn't really until we saw the finished movie that Blake and I were like god it so great I really do though [Music] Rico was Kimiko so dummy the real challenge ended up being the part that we thought was gonna be the easiest part which is that I'm acting against an inanimate object like that seemed like yeah like we can have the shortest shooting schedule I show up I talked to a potato it's great except that a real sex doll is not like just a like a potato or a dish or whatever this diva would not sit still would not hold a position Oh everybody else that was like I'm gonna kill her I'm gonna kill her so Meredith hanger who plays the the character of the sex saw is so brilliant and she and I got to act opposite each other like actually look into each other's eyes I think once and the rest of the time I'm acting against this doll that has like dots on its face because they're gonna replace it with Meredith's performance later we had to hire a second prop person just to help deal with this doll because like it seems like yeah you throw her in a closet and then we do a whole scene where I find her in a closet and she talks to me and she just doesn't want to do that and it took like two and a half hours to get her set up to the place where she would just freeze like a mannequin which you think would be the whole thing that she does I really tip my hat to people who commit to having a sex doll in their lives because it's a handful they are so much heavier than you think they would be and I'm really really good for you for being that committed I like jokingly named you because so what are you my prayers for the complete opposite highschool sweethearts that are so nice necessary soul of life I was just really blown away by this thing in the script where you get that uncanny feeling of I know that guy I've been in that situation oh and that's exactly how that feels I hate when that happens I love when that happens like that came up a lot in the pilot episode and then you know it was my first experience with episodic TV so I didn't realize how much this show really transforms as you go so in the end like so many talented people came on to work on the show and gave their personal experiences as well and it all got remixed to the point that I have plausible deniability so no it wasn't about you I mean it was but I can say that it wasn't and that's the really beautiful thing about the show is that because people were so willing to give like the specifics of really vulnerable or funny or romantic things that had happened to them it feels universal the more specific it is and it feels intensely relatable so there's so many of those like uncanny moments on the show and that's you know one of the things I love most about it the more that I've been able to work and work with really incredible people the people that really leave an impression on me are the people who seem happy I've worked with people who I really admire and and they turn out to be kind of miserable and you know somebody like John Lithgow though like I work with him and I'm just blown away by how generous he is so encouraging and supportive and really generous like with himself he's so open and so vulnerable and I feel like I sometimes get the self-preservation instinct kind of get guarded and the kind of career I want to have is the kind where I can be as full of love for my life and for my work as somebody like John Lithgow so that's the kind of thing that I want a model thanks so much Vanity Fair for watching the timeline of my career I hope I was less pretentious than you were expecting [Music]

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 2,438,425

Rating: 4.9598355 out of 5

Keywords: anna kendrick, anna kendrick career, anna kendrick career timeline, anna kendrick career timeline vanity fair, anna kendrick vanity fair, anna kendrick vanity fair interview, vanity fair career timeline, anna kendrick interview, anna kendrick breaks down her career, anna kendrick breaks down, anna kendrick career breakdown, anna kendricks career, anna kendrick cups, anna kendrick pitch perfect, pitch perfect cups, anna kendrick roles, vanity fair anna kendrick, vanity fair

Id: z5VfekpUpms

Length: 29min 1sec (1741 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/JumpAction]

This is a wonderful video. Although there were some movies I would have loved to see her comment on, she covered a lot of great ones!