On a recent afternoon at the museum of Modern Art in New York City, the actress Hailee Steinfeld paused in front of a video-game installation. Steinfeld--who, at 14, received an Oscar nomination for her role in 2010's True Grit--isn't a gamer, though her role in the new movie Ender's Game (in theaters Nov. 1) involves, as the title implies, some serious time with a battle simulator. Nevertheless, she picked up the joystick to a game called Passage, in which the player progresses through a lifetime.
"The early stages of life seem to be all about the future: what you're going to do when you grow up, who you're going to marry, and all the things you're going to do someday," the game designer, Jason Rohrer, writes in his artist's statement. "At the beginning of the game, you can see your entire life out in front of you, albeit in rather hazy form."
For Steinfeld, now 16, that hazy future has begun to clear. October saw the release of her second film, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes' adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, in which she plays the heroine. Now she's appearing in Ender's Game as the only girl in an army of children tasked with saving the world from aliens. She has roles in seven more movies either screening at festivals or due for release in 2014: Can a Song Save Your Life? and the Alice Munro adaptation Hateship Loveship, both of which showed at this fall's Toronto International Film Festival, plus two thrillers, two period dramas and a teen action comedy, Barely Lethal, in which she stars. And while 16 going on 17 is still definitively young, she'll soon hit the upper limit of what counts as precocious for an actor. Now is her moment to prove that she's not just someone who once, when she was a child, did an incredible thing but that she can be a star.
"I don't know that I've looked into [my age] as much as everyone else has," she says. "I guess people sort of apply that as a compliment to my work, that factor of 'and she's 16!' As I get older, whether that continues to be talked about or not, I hope people pay attention to the work."
It's not that Steinfeld wants to grow up fast. For now, her age is an asset to her acting, says Fellowes, who calls her "a cracking girl," noting that only one so young could be an optimistic Juliet. "What Hailee has is that extraordinary gift of youth, that she plays the earlier scenes as if it's going to be O.K.," he says. "I think that's something that life takes away from you."
Steinfeld spent a quiet year after True Grit focusing on school and looking for her next project. Finding something right for her age was one goal. If the first two films out of the gate are any indication, she gets an A in age appropriateness--and filming in France on Three Days to Kill, a thriller due in February, helped her get an A on a project about the French Revolution too. Steinfeld is visibly proud to be the actress closest to Juliet's 13 years to have played the character on film. (Claire Danes was 17 when Baz Luhrmann's version came out.) Nudity was excised from the script when Steinfeld signed on, leaving some kissing and minor groping between her Juliet and Romeo (played by Douglas Booth). And while the Ender's Game movie doesn't reveal exact ages, many soldiers in the novel on which it's based are younger than Juliet.