Newton jokes that the backpack-toting dork she plays in Lady Bird "is the real me," and next year, she'll play a more traditional teenager in Blockers, a studio-fronted comedy about three parents foiling their daughters’ attempts to get laid on prom night. That doesn't mean she's getting typecast as a rebel. In the former, her character auctioned off her virginity as a political demonstration against sexual slavery in the latter, her character’s wilder impulses get her killed, inspiring McDormand's character to seek justice. The defiant daughters she plays in Big Little Lies and Three Billboards, which shot concurrently on long days that Newton insists were too rewarding to be exhausting, both take throttling hold of their sexuality. If Newton’s rosy view of acting hints at a youthful zeal, her recent output has hinted at more of a darker streak. I don’t think it’s right to call it work.” The whole time, you’re creating around people who are interested in the same things you are, working together to make something great. When you go to work, real life almost pauses, if you’re lucky enough to land in something where you can let go and forget yourself. The closest I’ve come to a nine-to-five was because everyone knew when you’d be getting in and getting out. “I’ve never looked at acting like a job,” she insists. She still talks about the craft in the adoring terms of a wide-eyed rookie. “The people I’ve met from being on that show-I think those interactions have changed my life.”Īctors who’ve grown up in the industry can sometimes be jaded by the long hours and lack of normalcy, but the profession has lost none of its luster for Newton. “ Supernatural fans are amazing,” she gushes. Suddenly, Newton was landing guest spots on popular dramas like Supernatural and Mad Men and, for the first time in her life, getting recognized in public. Her character, Alex, was a juicy “final girl” type of party, cut from the same cloth as Halloween’s Laurie Strode and Scream’s Sidney Prescott. Newton’s big break came with the lead role in Paranormal Activity 4, the fourth installment of the popular found-footage horror franchise. They had candy everywhere, and I remember the cameras looked like giant robots you could swing on, like something in a playground. “I just dressed up like a princess every day. “I have the most amazing pictures of my outfits,” she recalls. I'd go to see Gypsy every night, and I totally made best friends with her,” Newton says of the legendary actress, deadpan. Eventually, Newton booked a role as the resident cute kid on the CBS sitcom Gary Unmarried, and even though she spent much of her youth working, it never felt that way to her. Around that time, she remembers waiting nightly at the side door of the Shubert Theater, where Bernadette Peters would greet fans after her starring performance in the Broadway revival of Gypsy. Miami-born Newton began her career in New York City when she was four years old, after booking a role on the ageless soap opera All My Children. I felt like I was the luckiest actor in the world to be on two great projects in one day, like, boom-boom." “Two were in Atlanta, so I'd work in the morning on one and in the afternoon on another. It’s a year that many actors her age would kill for. "The past six months, I did three projects at the same time,” she says. And this month alone, she’ll show up on the big screen as Frances McDormand's daughter in the furious black comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and as a classmate to the title character in Greta Gerwig’s nostalgic bildungsroman Lady Bird. In 2017 alone, Newton has made small-screen appearances as Reese Witherspoon’s daughter Abigail on HBO’s bougie melodrama Big Little Lies, and as another independent spirit (and daughter) on the final season of AMC’s critically acclaimed but criminally underwatched drama Halt and Catch Fire. “They were like, ‘Who’s Kathryn Newton? Does she even go here?’” Today, it’s likely that Newton’s former classmates have a pretty good idea of who she is. “I ran for president every year, but nobody knew who I was because I missed so much of it,” she says. But despite a regular education, the brutal schedules and irregular hours of show business made Newton something of an absentee student. “I’ve gone to real school my whole life,” says the now-20-year-old actor. Most actors who begin their careers at the age of four find themselves, at some point, getting homeschooled.
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