Anna Kendrick Says Watching Films Are Difficult After Becoming Actor

Anna Kendrick had to get acclimated to learning how the sausage gets made in Hollywood.

The Oscar-nominated actress said while on the First We Feast series “Hot Ones” that movies were “kind of ruined” for her as an audience member after first starting out in the film industry. Kendrick made her film debut in 2003 and went on to star in “Twilight,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” and “Pitch Perfect,” while landing an Oscar nomination for “Up in the Air.”

“I think that when you start making movies, there’s a period where they’re kind of ruined for you, because you’re just thinking of behind-the-scenes and how the sausage gets made of it all,” Kendrick said. “And now, I feel like it’s just sort of second nature that’s a running script in the back of my head.”

The “A Simple Favor” star continued, “So when a movie is really bad, it’s so much worse, because I can see like, ‘Why that choice? It would have been so easy to do this or whatever.’ And when it’s good, the running script is not just like, ‘I’m immersed and it’s great.’ There’s a running thing in the background like, ‘Oh my god, every department just nailed it.’ I kind of get this bonus appreciation for all these people who came together and made this thing.

“Alice, Darling” actress-producer Kendrick shared that she was warned about being typecast early in her career.

“When a movie is really bad, it’s so much worse,” Kendrick said of realizing “how the sausage gets made.”

“Somebody said something to me right after ‘Up in the Air’ came out that was like, ‘Everything you’re about to get offered is going to be the exact performance you just gave.’ Because for an industry that’s supposedly so creative, people have very short memories and they want to take the easy route a lot,” Kendrick said. “So you’ll basically be offered a bunch of things that are exactly the same thing you just did, and then you’ll finally do something different and you’ll just get offered that thing.”

Kendrick continued, “And that person was like, ‘I happen to know that happens to everyone, including Meryl Streep, so it has nothing to do with you. It’s just that people only think about the last thing they remember you from, and it’s going to be an uphill battle your whole career,’” she said. “I really think it was a gift to hear that at the beginning of my career because I just sort of expected that and I don’t take it very personally. I just go, ‘Oh, this is going to be the thing I’m swimming against my whole career, even a decade from now.’”

Uocoming movies for Anna include:

• Self Reliance. 2023.
• Trolls 3. Queen Poppy (voice) Post-production. 2023.
• Unsound. In Development.
• The Dating Game. Cheryl Bradshaw. Post-production.