Hailee Steinfeld Finds Her Edge

Whenever Hailee Steinfeld gets a new script, her first instinct is to identify her biggest challenge. “There’s always a scene or two or three that I feel like I could circle in red pen,” she tells us, settling in after her cover photo shoot. “That’s the daunting hill I’m going to have to climb at some point.” 

This moment was easy for her to find in “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending Prohibition-era vampire tale that’s hitting theaters April 18. We’ll avoid specifics to preserve the many surprises in the deliriously twisty story. Suffice to say that the scene, which blends vulnerability, intimacy, and shocking violence, is more than worthy of Steinfeld’s red pen. 

The actor headed to New Orleans secure in the knowledge that the scene in question was penciled in for later in the shoot. But the unpredictable spring weather in the Big Easy had other plans. A series of turbulent storms swept in that upended the production schedule, meaning Steinfeld had to climb that “daunting hill” on the very first day of shooting. 

“What I’m about to say is going to sound very actor-y, but I had really hoped that would happen later down the line—just for the sake of building rapport and comfortability and confidence in the space, the wardrobe, and the character,” she says. “But it came up out of nowhere, so we did it, and it was done.”

Then she reflects, “That one scene was like our North Star.” 

The moment became a touchstone for everything that followed, anchoring Steinfeld’s most intense, mature performance to date. That’s saying a lot, considering she got an Oscar nomination at the age of 14 for her turn as the headstrong Mattie Ross in the Coen brothers’ 2010 Western “True Grit.” Since then, she’s built a successful career as a pop singer while continuing to shine onscreen. She cornered the market on youth-in-revolt roles like Nadine in the coming-of-age dramedy “The Edge of Seventeen” (2016), rebellious poet Emily Dickinson on Apple TV+’s anachronistic “Dickinson” (2019), and Young Avenger–to-be Kate Bishop (aka Hawkeye) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Still, “Sinners” marks a leveling up of sorts, giving Steinfeld the chance to truly elevate her craft. Set in the 1930s, the film follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Coogler’s longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan. Fleeing from a life of crime in Chicago, the two return to their Mississippi hometown to open a juke joint. They enlist the help of Sammy (Miles Caton), a preacher’s son who dreams of being a bluesman; alcoholic musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo); and Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a Hoodoo practitioner with romantic ties to Smoke. Then there’s Mary (Steinfeld), Stack’s iron-willed old flame; though she’s married to another man, she’s still mourning what she could have had with her first love. 

On its opening night, the establishment becomes a celebratory refuge for the local Black community; but all that joy attracts something supernatural—and hungry for blood. “Sinners” is a remarkably crafted creature feature with a clear, impactful allegory: The second people of color find a spot where they can be free, pale-skinned predators emerge from the shadows to drain them dry. 

“Sinners” shows audiences a new dimension of Steinfeld’s star persona; the performance feels more complex and considered, but also more personal. Mary wrestles with the ways the color of her skin affects whom society allows her to call family. Like her character, Steinfeld is mixed race: In addition to British and German heritage, her maternal grandfather was a Black Filipino man.

The actor knew she wanted to be a part of “Sinners” as soon as she heard it was Coogler’s first film following his culture-shifting success with the MCU’s “Black Panther” (2018) and its sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2022). The opportunity to work with a filmmaker so deft at blending social commentary with genre trappings was irresistible. 

But first, she had to audition. Despite being an industry veteran at 28, she still approaches the process with trepidation.

“I had a period after shooting ‘True Grit’ where auditioning was incredibly difficult for me. Being in a room with a tripod, a camera, and white walls was the most foreign thing after being on a set with a wardrobe, having to button up 10 buttons on each shoe,” Steinfeld recalls.

“Every actor can tell you horror stories of literally feeling like you can hear someone’s watch ticking,” she continues. “And it’s like: I’m taking up too much of their time. This is not going well. You’re in your head, and you feel like these people hate you.”

Steinfeld’s “Sinners” audition was the opposite, and it changed the way that she saw auditioning altogether. “The people in the room want you to win,” she says. “They’re looking for somebody that’s going to make this great, and they want it to be you.” 

The stakes were particularly high since she was reading not only for Coogler and Jordan, but also Francine Maisler, the Emmy-winning casting director behind acclaimed projects like the “Dune” movies, “Succession,” and “Challengers.”

“You’ve got Ryan and Michael, who have the craziest, most incredible history and track record, and then Francine, for that matter,” Steinfeld says. “For them to make you feel like a part of that [legacy], even for 20 minutes… I have moments like that, where I walk out and I’m like, Damn, I want this so bad. But if I don’t get it, at least I got that moment with them.”

Luckily, she did get it—and the environment in the audition room bled over onto a set defined by creative breakthroughs and crackling chemistry. One moment that immediately springs to Steinfeld’s mind was a bit of on-set improv between herself and Jordan. Before the horror and bloodshed of the night kicks off, Mary and Stack find themselves face-to-face for the first time since separating, neither willing to voice how painful the years in between have been for both. 

“Mary has spent years grieving the loss of what could have been, thinking they’d had this plan they were going to stick to,” Steinfeld says. “Michael was so good in that moment. I just got wrapped up in the love that these characters have for each other and the tragedy that they won’t be able to ever fully live that out.” 

The scene, which is one of the more heartbreaking moments in the film, is the result of an effort between the actors and Coogler to pare the loaded interaction down to its essentials. “We [all wanted to] keep it concise,” Steinfeld explains. She adds that much of the production was like this—a true collaboration.

“For convenience’s sake, directors are sometimes shouting notes from afar; and suddenly, it’s like everyone is now watching to see if that note is received,” she says. “But Ryan would make it a point to come over and make sure you were the only person that heard him and he was the only person that heard you. It gave me a sense of security; there was such a level of trust there.” 

Coogler wasn’t the only creative Steinfeld sought out for advice. Having developed a passion for photography in recent years, she found herself drawn to “Sinners” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw and her 65 mm camera. 

Hailee Steinfeld and Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners” Courtesy Warner Bros.

“I’m so grateful to Autumn and our crew for being so patient with me,” she says, “because they’re so in the zone, they’ve got a job to do, and I’m just behind them asking questions about the reload and what the heck happens if stuff gets damaged in transit, and do we have to reshoot the entire movie?” 

I ask Steinfeld if that interest in what goes on behind the scenes signals plans to step behind the camera herself. “If I’m lucky enough,” she says. For now, she’s more interested in slowing down and capturing snippets of her whirlwind life in an intentional way. “We all walk around with phones on us all the time; we’re always snapping pictures. And we think it’s not good enough, so we take another picture, and then we’ve lost the magic of the moment that was probably perfect in the first photo.”

It comes down to a boundless curiosity that’s been there from the beginning. “I am still that 13-year-old in ‘True Grit’ who just has so many questions with no answers and is in awe of everything going on around me, in disbelief that I’m even there,” she says with a laugh. 

This sense of coming full circle struck her often on the set of “Sinners.” She found herself “working on something where the writing is so good that there’s nothing to fill in, with a cast that is so wickedly talented and a filmmaker who has the strongest vision, point of view, patience, drive, and ambition. 

“I haven’t been [on a set] with all those things for a long time,” Steinfeld continues. “I’ve gotten so lucky on all the projects I’ve worked on, where they have certain components of that experience I had on ‘True Grit.’ ‘Sinners’ may be the closest [I’ve come] to having all of them.” 

That happens a lot, actually; her memory comes back around to that breakout role. “I find that every time I’m on a set of any kind, somehow, someway, at some part of the day, ‘True Grit’ makes its way to the front of my brain,” she says. 

In particular, Steinfeld thinks back to a piece of advice she received from her older costars Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon. The day filming wrapped, she was “an emotional mess,” unable to conceive of what would come after that last “cut.” “They all had their own way of telling me not to take this life too seriously and not to get wrapped up or lose myself in all the madness that may or may not come with this world,” she recalls. “As a crying 13-year-old, I nodded, and it went in one ear and out the other.”

But as time goes by and Steinfeld evolves both onscreen and off, she often finds herself returning to that wisdom. “As I get older, I realize that life is short,” she says. She’s energized by the thought of maturing as an actor and taking her “Sinners” experience into what’s coming next—including her highly anticipated (and top-secret) return to the MCU. 

“I’m excited about the idea of continuing to grow with a character like Kate, especially in something as huge as the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” she says. “You get to go back to your family; you get to go back to that little home that then becomes part of this grander picture. I love that character, and I totally understand why she is so loved.” 

It’s still a work in progress, though, to recognize success in the moment. At the tail end of our interview, she takes a deep breath to shake off the oddness of discussing yourself for an hour. For her, taking stock of her arc from “True Grit” to today feels both overwhelming and rejuvenating. “That was a conversation we had from time to time [on the set of ‘Sinners’]—just: ‘This is so crazy that we get to do this.’ ”

It’s this perspective that drives Steinfeld to keep taking on new challenges. It’s why she savors any and all opportunities to be in the room, no matter how fleeting, and why she’s trying to learn about photography so she can capture memories while they’re still perfect—yes, even after her next inevitable rough audition. 

“I’ll have to go to therapy over it, for sure,” she says. “But I got that moment. I had that, and I’m going to walk away with it.” 

This story originally appeared in the Apr. 10 issue of Backstage Magazine. To hear our full conversation with Steinfeld, listen and subscribe to In the Envelope: The Actor's Podcast.