Hailee Steinfeld Biography

Hailee Steinfeld was only 13 when she played obstinate 19th-century teen Mattie Ross in the western True Grit. It was her first major role, and it won her an nomination as best supporting actress in that year’s Oscars and Screen Actors Guild awards. She has since made her mark as both an actor and a pop singer.

Hailee Steinfeld was raised in California, and she had bit parts in the TV series Back To You (2007, with Kelsey Grammer) and Sons of Tucson (2010), and also appeared in a national Kmart TV ad, before beating out a reported 15,000 other auditioners to win her role in True Grit.

In long brown pigtails and a gray felt hat, Steinfeld played an Arkansas teen who sets out to avenge the death of her father. She was praised by critics for holding her own with her veteran Oscar-winning co-stars Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. She didn’t win the Oscar (it went to Melissa Leo for The Fighter), but the nomination marked her as a rising star.

In 2013 she co-starred with Kristin Wiig in the romance Hateship Loveship, and played Juliet in a film version of Shakespeare‘s Romeo and Juliet, with Douglas Booth as Romeo. Steinfeld played newcomer Emily Junk in the musical comedies Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) and Pitch Perfect 3 (2017), both with Anna Kendrick. Steinfeld also earned rave reviews for her performance in the 2016 film The Edge of Seventeen (co-starring Woody Harrelson).

Hailee Steinfeld has also become known as a singer. Her four-song debut EP, Haiz, was released in 2016 and included the singles “Rock Bottom” and “Love Myself.” Her single “Capital Letters” was featured in the 2018 film Fifty Shades Freed.

Steinfeld’s other films include Bumblebee (2018), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (as the voice of Gwen Stacy, 2018) and the re-booted re-boot of Charlie’s Angels (2019). On television, she starred as Emily Dickinson in the 2019 series Dickinson.