Thomasin McKenzie Is This Fall's Busiest Breakout Star

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Few actors are as busy as nineteen-year-old Thomasin McKenzie—this fall, she stars in Taika Waititi’s new film Jojo Rabbit; David Michôd’s The King, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, as Phillipa, sister to Timothée Chalamet’s King Henry V; and also as Mary, the love interest in Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang, alongside George MacKay, Russell Crowe, and Nicholas Hoult.

McKenzie’s busy schedule of superlative projects comes on the heels of her breakout role in director Debra Granik’s 2018 film Leave No Trace. The New Zealander says she didn’t have any expectations when she submitted a self-tape for the starring role of Tom but was thrilled when she was offered the part. “It felt amazing. I think it was so unexpected for me to get it because I knew that a lot of young girls my age were auditioning that were just as talented or just as able to do the job,” she says. “And coming from New Zealand, it’s a long way away from America and the chances are low. So I was ecstatic when I learned that I got the callback and then just beyond belief when I learned that I got the part.”

Leave No Trace is an evocative film about an Iraq war veteran (Ben Foster) and his daughter who live off the grid in a large state park in Oregon. One day Tom wanders too close to a busy trail and is spotted, the authorities are called, and the father-daughter duo is forced through an unwanted reintroduction into society at the hands of social services. Granik’s signature style of gritty realism offers a heartbreaking look at PTSD and the effects it can have on relationships, as both Tom and her father experience the challenges of trying to live a conventional life. The director is also known for her exceptional casting—her previous film, Winter’s Bone, was Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout and as a result, critics and audiences eagerly anticipated McKenzie’s performance.

McKenzie was only seventeen and still in school when filming began in Oregon and had to take time off to travel to America for the thirty-day shoot, which also involved an intense boot camp. “We had a two-week rehearsal period in which we spent a lot of time with survivalists in the Oregon forest,” she says, “doing knife work, learning how to make fires, learning how to walk through the forest, going unknown and not disturbing nature, not disturbing the plants and the rock face, making shelter, collecting water, that kind of stuff.” While McKenzie acquired plenty of real-life skills in pre-production, she gained even more knowledge on set working closely with Granik. “I learned a lot about the relationships there can be between the actor and the director and how much of it is teamwork,” she explains. “You’re really working on a film project together and you’re both putting a lot of heart into it. I really value that relationship and it taught me to look at that relationship in a completely different way. It’s important to feel that you’re equal and on a level playing field and you’re in it together.”

Leave No Trace received ecstatic critical praise, and the unknown actor definitely exceeded the high expectations set for her. McKenzie’s heartfelt and earnest performance was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, among others, and she won the prestigious National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance. “When we were filming Leave No Trace, I honestly didn’t really give any thought to there being the potential of it being recognized or even my performance being recognized, so it kind of came as a big shock,” she says. “Learning I’d been nominated for various awards and even winning a couple of them was a very, very new experience, one that I don’t think I was quite prepared for. I don’t think you can mentally ever be prepared for something like that.”

In a way, it seems like McKenzie was destined to be a great actor and has been inadvertently preparing for her career all her life. Her mother is an acting coach; her father is an actor, writer, and director; her grandfather was an actor; and her grandmother was made a Dame in New Zealand for her services to the theater. “I was never exactly officially coached by my parents, but always being around them and watching them share their knowledge over the years with other people and also watching them just acting, doing their thing, I’ve definitely learned a lot from them and I’ve taken a lot away from that,” she says. “It’s interesting though, I’ve found as time has gone on I’ve started to rely a bit more on my mom and my dad’s knowledge because I’m more interested in exploring with different levels and different ways and approaches to directing.”

While she may love acting now, McKenzie admits that, coming from a family of performers, it wasn’t always her principal interest. “I warmed up to it over time I’d say,” she adds. “I wasn’t so keen on it at first but eventually I got more and more into and now I’m crazy about it.” Currently, she is keenly focused on finding projects with powerful messages and says that with the success of Leave No Trace, she’s been given the opportunity to choose those best suited to her. “I really am passionate about telling stories that need to be heard so that’s definitely something I think about when I’m reading scripts,” she says. “Does it have the potential to make a difference and to teach people things and to teach me things?”

Her desire to tell meaningful stories led her to her latest film, Jojo Rabbit, which won the People’s Choice Award after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month. Directed by fellow New Zealander Taika Waititi, the film is set during World War II and carries his trademark sense of humor, but intertwined with real-life issues of segregation and blind nationalism. Labeled as an anti-hate satire, it’s a story of a young boy, Jojo, and his imaginary friend Hitler (played by Waititi himself) and explores his relationship with McKenzie’s character, a Jewish teenager whom he discovers is being hidden in his attic by his mother, played by Scarlett Johansson.

In preparation for the role, McKenzie studied World War II, which only solidified the significance of the project in her mind. “I’m aware that people of my generation and even generations before me and generations younger than me are blind to the atrocities that happened during World War II and I think it’s incredibly important to tell these stories, to encourage people to be more accepting of other religions and ways of life,” she says. “[It’s an] opportunity to tell such an incredible story that needs to be heard and that people need to be reminded of because these kind of things are at a risk of repeating themselves. It’s really important to tell these stories and to remind people of the past and that we can’t let that happen again.”

Since Leave No Trace, McKenzie has continuously kept up her back-to-back filming schedule—she spent the summer in London filming Edgar Wright’s highly anticipated film Last Night in Soho. Although she would love a break to maybe take a trip to Japan or back home to New Zealand, she admits it’s unlikely considering how hard it is for her to say no to new projects. She has no idea what’s coming next, but she is keeping an open mind. “I feel very fulfilled with what I’ve done so far and I’m excited about the future. I’d love to keep acting and making beautiful creations and beautiful art,” she says, “but also maybe doing something like working with animals. I’d love to study philosophy or classics or something like that. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen, but I’m looking forward to it either way.”

Jojo Rabbit is out October 18. The King is out November 1. True History of the Kelly Gang is out in 2020.