Why Isn’t Anna Kendrick A Major Movie Star?

Why isn’t Anna Kendrick a major movie star? Granted, this is a question that could be applied to any number of different charismatic and talented actors, and the answer is usually some combination of superheroes and streaming: We’ve entered an era where characters and so-called IP are often a bigger draw than the actors who bring them to life (Batman is more popular than Robert Pattinson; Chris Evans is only a marquee-level star when he plays Captain America; that sort of thing). This in turn has sent a lot of well-known stars into the embrace of streaming, which often means doing prestige miniseries rather than feature films (Kate Winslet may be in the Avatar sequel, but her biggest star turn of the past decade was on the HBO show Mare of Easttown). 

Still, Kendrick seems well-positioned to translate name recognition, critical appreciation, and fan affection into a headlining career. She’s starred in a hit franchise (Pitch Perfect) that lets her do comedy, drama, and singing; she successfully played a relatable mom in the hit thriller A Simple Favor; and although most of us can never really know the people we watch in movies and on TV, by all appearances Kendrick isn’t in possession of a massive Hollywood ego. If there was a little false modesty in calling her memoir Scrappy Little Nobody, it had enough stories about her theater-kid past to make clear that she’s not exactly a nepo baby, either.  

Yet Kendrick hasn’t starred in a splashy theatrical release since A Simple Favor back in 2018. Since then, she’s done a couple of streaming movies (Noelle for Disney+ and Stowaway for Netflix), and her new film, the harrowing domestic drama Alice, Darling, is playing semi-wide at AMC theaters. Her other project slated for 2023 is a movie written and directed by Jake Johnson, her co-star in indies like Drinking Buddies and Digging for Fire; if it’s anything like those, it will be both worthwhile and small-scale. 

There’s nothing wrong with Kendrick’s obvious affinity for scrappy little indies. She started in that world, stealing scenes as a teenager in Camp (performing “Ladies Who Lunch,” preceded by a memorable understudy’s assessment of the original actress: “She’s fucked, I’m ready, and the goddamn show must go on”) and the underseen Rocket Science. One of her best and most underseen performances is in Joe Swanberg’s low-budget Happy Christmas, as a more grounded version of the type of charming screw-up she would play in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. The new Alice, Darling, while a little thin, is a story of emotional abuse that she’s described as a personal, meaningful film for her; it’s not the type of project that a big studio budget typically yields. (It’s grossed just north of $100,000 since its release on December 30, 2022.)

Yet Alice, in its tense modesty, also highlights what seems to be missing from Kendrick’s filmography: a movie or two with contrasting zip. For most viewers, her signature role is probably still Beca, the sarcastic but ultimately soft-hearted music obsessive of the Pitch Perfect trilogy. It’s a bit like being known for your high school GPA; the Pitch Perfect movies even acknowledge, as they go on, the absurdity of a college a cappella group sticking together well past graduation. The uneven sequels don’t detract from Kendrick’s work in them, though. In comedies like those or Mike and Dave, she has a screwball tartness, chased with Liz Lemon-ish social discomfort. She brings high spirits to low material, combining Rosalind Russell speed with Diane Keaton hesitation.

So why on earth has she not starred in a pure romantic comedy? (Mike and Dave ultimately functions as one, but it spends a lot of time on bromance antics. Also, though it’s a fun movie and she’s funny in it, Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick can do better than Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.) She’s had more luck in musicals—altogether, she’s starred in The Last Five Years, co-starred in Into the Woods, anchored the musical-ish Pitch Perfects, and sang her heart out in multiple Trolls movies—without taking center stage for a really big one. 

The contemporary genres that overshadow rom-coms and musicals, of course, are sci-fi, fantasy, and action—superhero-level stuff. The Twilight series, which snagged Kendrick for a supporting part early in her career, offers a glimpse of how she might react to all that Marvel-movie worldbuilding: Motormouthed, half-interested, secretly more fun than anyone else on screen. She’s been suggested to play the goofily charming Marvel hero Squirrel Girl; now that she’s likely aged out of that role, it’s hard to think of another that would fit her persona.

It may be that after a run of love-interest parts in the late 2010s, Kendrick simply isn’t that interested in fitting her persona into half-interested studio megaproductions. Alice, Darling peels back a layer of nouveau-yuppie professionalism and self-deprecation to expose the anxieties and psychology injuries beneath, and her previous starring role, in the space survival thriller Stowaway, is decidedly sober. (No spoilers, but it doesn’t exactly end with her in a romantic clinch.) These movies can afford to downplay her charm, because at least some of it will shine through anyway.

That’s exactly what still makes her seem like a star in waiting: Her innate qualities—intelligence chased with self-doubt; haplessness chased with savvy—linger like a glow. There’s also something insistently contemporary about Kendrick’s fast-talking nervous energy; she’s kind of a distilled super-millennial, young enough to be good at Twitter but old enough to remember a time before Facebook, beautiful and insistently uncomfortable with that beauty. It’s hard to picture her in a period piece going back more than a decade or two, and that’s exactly where a lot of major directors like Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Jane Campion spend time these days. 

Kendrick has a period piece of her own in the works. She has directed and starred in The Dating Game, based on the true story of a serial killer who appeared on, and won, the 1970s game show. It’s hard to tell whether this will be a true-crime drama, a full-on thriller, a dark comedy, or some combination of the three, which is exactly why it sounds enticing. At the same time, it also sounds like another break from a mainstream leading-lady career she hasn’t quite pursued. She could become the ultimate millennial movie star: a charming and talented try-hard who can’t quite get ahead.

Jesse Hassenger is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com and tweets dumb jokes at @rockmarooned.