--- title: Interview on Leave No Trace Breakout Star Thomasin Mckenzie description: Leave No Trace has movie taste-makers are praising 17-year-old actress Thomasin Mckenzie. canonical: https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/ author: Entertainment Weekly article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-26T18:43:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:46:17.236Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Leave No Trace Teen Star Is on Her Way to J.Law Status og:description: This is the movie everyone's talking about og:url: https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte1d43b83b179089b/698933e57cdbac09f7d5d3ed/lnt_01544_r_preview.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2048 og:image:height: 1152 og:image:alt: LNT_01544_R_preview og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Leave No Trace Teen Star Is on Her Way to J.Law Status twitter:description: This is the movie everyone's talking about twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte1d43b83b179089b/698933e57cdbac09f7d5d3ed/lnt_01544_r_preview.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The _Leave No Trace_ Breakout Teen Actor Is on Her Way to J.Law Status > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Nick Romano / Entertainment Wee](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Nick Romano / Entertainment Wee Jun 26, 2018 6:43 PM UTC  by [Nick Romano / Entertainment Wee](https://time.com/author/entertainment-weekly/) ## Nick Romano / Entertainment Wee Jun 26, 2018 6:43 PM UTC The next [Jennifer Lawrence](http://time.com/5185078/jennifer-lawrence-oscars-2018-wine-chair/) could very well be in our sights. At least, that’s what critics coming out of Sundance have been saying for months. Director Debra Granik helped launch the [Oscar](http://time.com/5263472/new-summer-movies-2018/) winner’s career with 2010’s _Winter’s Bone_, so her new teen lead of _Leave No Trace_, Thomasin McKenzie, can understand why some are anticipating another star-making performance. “I think it’s cool people have been comparing me to \[Lawrence\], but also I’ve got my own acting style,” McKenzie says. “But I’d love to be like her. I love her. She’s cool.” Audiences can get a sense through _EW’s_ exclusive clip, above, from _Leave No Trace_ why movie taste-makers are fawning over this 17-year-old Kiwi actress. Her subtle, powerful performance as Tom, a young girl living off the grid with her father (Ben Foster), led to roles in WWII satire Jojo Rabbit from Taika Waititi (the Marvel director who made Thor cool again) and Netflix’s Shakespeare-based _The King_ alongside Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson. So now a girl, once set on steering clear of acting, is jet-setting to New York for press tours and to the U.K. and Czech Republic for movie-making. “It is so much fun!” she remarks of all the traveling. “I had never been to Europe before… Now I want to see more and more.” Her grandmother Dame Catherine Harcourt, mother Miranda Harcourt, and father Stuart McKenzie formed their own film family dynasty in New Zealand through acting and directing. McKenzie, already wise beyond her years, took to the craft while filming a movie called _Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story_. Though only 14 at the time, she was acting out a true tale involving “rape and abuse of power in the police force,” and she realized the industry could be more than just “fame and fortune.”  “For me, \[acting is\] about telling stories and sharing things that need to be heard,” she says. “And also, you can educate people through acting and telling those kinds of stories, which I love, and it made me realize I had an opportunity to make a difference in the world.” McKenzie’s career got a jolt from _The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies_, yet you probably didn’t even know it. Her bit role involved a scene where Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel brought her character Astrid back to life, but Peter Jackson ultimately cut the moment — having filmed way too much footage for a two-and-a-half-hour movie. “There is still a part of it where I’m in it, but you’d only know if you \[already\] knew,” she says. With _Leave No Trace_, McKenzie gets a lot more to work with. When casting her lead roles, Granik looks for an actor who can offer his or her own “personal insights,” someone who shows a “willingness” to put in the work and to “research” the character. For Granik, a film is “not a ready-made thing.” The actors, she notes, “are going to be informing it so hugely that I need to see some sign there that that’s exciting for them.” It’s in that sense that McKenzie shares a similarity to Lawrence; both actors possess these qualities. Having auditioned for most of her roles over Skype, McKenzie’s first in-person meetings with Granik and Foster roughly coincided with her first day of wilderness training, which entailed making fires “without using matchsticks or lighters,” collecting water, listening to bird calls, and the like. She hadn’t conferenced with Foster prior to rehearsals either, which brought another level of pressure. “He looked a lot different than I thought he would because he seems to transform in every role he takes on,” McKenzie recalls. “I can’t remember exactly \[my first impressions\] because I was really nervous, but he was a really nice guy.”  Foster was already thinking about fatherhood from expecting his firstborn with _Orange Is the New Black‘s_ Laura Prepon, and McKenzie was dealing with the “grief” that comes from being away from her own family while on set in Oregon. So the pair naturally bonded on and off camera. McKenzie also mentions using a “Hug to Connect” technique with Foster that her mom handed down, “where we just hugged for two minutes right before the first scene to get in the rhythm of each others’ breath and to feel each other’s warmth.” This was followed by a traditional M?ori greeting exercise — M?ori being the indigenous people of New Zealand — “where you touch noses and foreheads and you close your eyes.” She and Foster needed to be fearless touching hands and hugging, since Leave No Trace — an intimate, character-driven piece — is fueled by this father-daughter relationship. The “film fanatics” out of Sundance (i.e. critics and casting agents) quickly took notice of their performances, McKenzie acknowledges. Hence her newfound bankability. She calls it “surreal and crazy and very exciting,” but she’s interested to see what the general public thinks of her work. All this hype has been happening in a vacuum, as Leave No Trace doesn’t open for the masses until June 29. McKenzie doesn’t have too much time to sit and think on this, though. A day after our conversation in New York, she hit the road again to film more projects, including Jojo Rabbit. Waititi already showed the world his spoof of Adolf Hitler in the film, about an awkward German boy (Roman Griffin), his single mother (Scarlett Johansson), and his imaginary friend Hitler (Waititi). But McKenzie’s role as the girl who upends the boy’s world views remains elusive. McKenzie, a fan of Waititi’s _Boy_ and _Hunt for the Wilderpeople_, remembers how the eccentric filmmaker was “pointing out artworks in our house to his friends in the Fox studio” during the second round of auditions over a video conference. She says, “What I adore about his films is their unique but inclusive humor, which often conveys quite dark themes like betrayal and loss.” Not even Lawrence can flaunt that on her résumé (yet). _This_ [_article_](http://ew.com/movies/2018/06/26/leave-no-trace-thomasin-mckenzie/) _originally appeared on_ [_EW.com_](http://ew.com) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/"},"headline":"The Leave No Trace Breakout Teen Actor Is on Her Way to J.Law Status","datePublished":"2018-06-26T18:43:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:46:17.236Z","description":"Leave No Trace has movie taste-makers are praising 17-year-old actress Thomasin Mckenzie.","url":"https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/","keywords":["movies","Newsfeed","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte1d43b83b179089b/698933e57cdbac09f7d5d3ed/lnt_01544_r_preview.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nick Romano / Entertainment Wee"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte1d43b83b179089b/698933e57cdbac09f7d5d3ed/lnt_01544_r_preview.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"LNT_01544_R_preview","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5322675/thomasin-mckenzie-leave-no-trace/","name":"The Leave No Trace Breakout Teen Actor Is on Her Way to J.Law Status"}}]}] ```