Since becoming the second youngest nominee ever for a Tony Award (in 1998, at age 12, for the role of Daisy in the Broadway musical adaptation of
High Society), Anna Kendrick has been recurringly an "up and coming star."
She was next praised uniformly by critics as the standout performance in the 2003 film,
Camp, about a performing arts summer camp similar to (and filmed at) the famed
Stagedoor Manor. As Fritzi, Anna's (AK for short on this website)
scene leading to and including her singing of Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" is not to be missed! And her experience here blending naive innocence with lurking evil would become a tutorial for aspects of her next noteworthy role four years later.
That role was Ginny Ryerson in 2007's
Rocket Science, in which, as a champion debater, she recruits a stutterer to her high school forensics team. Again, her performance was oft mentioned as standout in reviews of this quirky and entertaining movie. See it if you want to understand why there's a fan site for AK.
With that success, the entertainment industry newspaper,
Variety, actually put her on a list last fall of "Ten Actors to Watch." So when will our next chance be to see if her reputation will catch fire? That depends on whether they ever release
The Marc Pease Experience (completed in 2007), in which she plays the teen love interest of competing men: Jason Schwartzman, a former star of high school musicals ten years after graduating, and Ben Stiller, the high school teacher who directed those musicals. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until December, when the currently filming
Twilight hits the screens. AK plays Jessica Stanley, key friend of main character, Bella Swan (plot: teenager Bella loves "reformed" vampire, Edward). With the fan base of that book series, as well as the huge buzz on the internet about the movie,
Twilight could be the vehicle that gets a mass audience to realize what we already know: Anna Kendrick is terrific!