Hailee Steinfeld's Film Debut, True Grit
There is no country for a young girl. But here she is, regardless: Hailee Steinfeld, the 13-year-old star of Joel and Ethan Coen's Western drama True Grit, as a pigtailed, angel-faced pioneer girl who recruits Jeff Bridges's one-eyed bounty hunter for bloody vengeance after her father is murdered.
Matt Damon co-stars as a Texas Ranger who joins the hunt, and Josh Brolin is the predator-turned-prey who gunned down her father. A potentially intimidating lineup of guys for a girl making her first film, but they were soon wrapped around her finger. "I actually started what I called the Bad Boy Jar," Hailee says. "If they were to curse, they had to pay, because they did that pretty often." In the end, she collected around $300 and donated it to the Alzheimer's Foundation. "The f-word was $5, and every other word was $1," she says cheerfully. "They would say the f-word, and then realize they'd said it, and then they would say the s-word. So I'd be like, 'Okay, that's $6!'"
But the men got their revenge. "The guys all looked at me and said, 'Okay, this is not fair. We have to designate you a word now.' So I was not allowed to say like, or else it was fifty cents," she says.
Hailee at the Teen Vogue Young Hollywood Party, October 2010
Hailee got into acting at age 8, after being inspired by a teenage cousin who starred in a commercial. She's done short films and a few TV roles, but True Grit, opening December 25, is her debut in feature films. It was also her introduction to the Coen brothers, since most of their movies are R-rated. "I saw The Big Lebowski," she says, because it was Bridges's last film with the Coens. "I saw little bits and pieces of Fargo, and I really want to see Raising Arizona."
Despite True Grit's brutality, Hailee says that Joel and Ethan kept things mellow. "It is a heavy movie, and you get on set and it's, like, the mood is still [intense], from whatever we just did. But like at lunchtime and after lunch, it was a really, like, relaxed set." So relaxed that she just cost herself $1.50.