WOMEN WE LOVE: Hailee Steinfeld

Hailee Steinfeld has lived in the spotlight since she was 13, when she was cast in True Grit in 2010 and subsequently nominated for an Academy Award. The actress-turned-pop star-turned-actress-again is among the brightest stars in Hollywood. She’s currently being highlighted for her scene-stealing performance in Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan as a set of twins, Smoke and Stack, in 1932 Mississippi. Steinfeld co-stars alongside Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku. As Stack’s love interest, Steinfeld plays a delicate emotional story with depth and drama amongst a background of supernatural horrors.

It’s not surprising for Steinfeld to hit it out of the park, considering her filmography. As a young actress, her career was marred by projects stuck in pre-production and a barrage of scheduling conflicts. She was announced to play characters like Hadley in The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight or the title character in Carrie Polly, but she left these projects and others. Her luck turned around in 2015, when Steinfeld co-starred in Pitch Perfect 2 as Emily Junk, an aspiring singer-songwriter, and it seemed that Steinfeld was keen to follow in her character’s footsteps. After the film’s release, Steinfeld signed to Republic Records.

In August 2015 she released her debut single, “Love Myself”, working with production duo Mattman and Robin and songwriters like Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. “I’ve worked with an incredible team of people who’ve done nothing but help me to execute what I have in my mind,” Steinfeld said. The single peaked at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was met with commercial success.

Since then, she has released two extended plays and more than 20 singles. In 2017, she won a Billboard Music Award for Top Covered Artist for the song “Most Girls”. On April 18, she released “Dangerous” as a single for the Sinners Original Soundtrack. The song blends her pop style with a heavy percussion and themes reflected in the film.

She’s made a name for herself in the hero genre as well. She played the talented and headstrong Kate Bishop in Disney's "Hawkeye" (2021), co-starring with Jeremy Renner and Florence Pugh. For the role, she spent months learning how to shoot a bow and arrow then refining the unique hand-to-hand combat style of Kate. “Let me tell you, if you’ve never shot a bow and arrow before, you are sore in places you never knew could be sore the next day,” said Steinfeld of the whole experience.

She also stars as teenage superhero Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen in the Academy-Award winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). She returned for the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse (2023), where she dug deeper into her backstory and relationships. “I’ve always loved this character,” Steinfeld said. “But I love her so much more in this film from what we learn about her.”

Steinfeld has a knack for gripping an audience with an emotional story and leaving them wanting more. The culmination of her career is apparent in Sinners, where she plays Mary, who doubles as both a love interest and a secondary antagonist. (Although whether or not it’s fair to call Mary an "antagonist" has become the source of major audience discussion...) Her connection with Jordan is palpable, and you find yourself rooting for them from their first interaction. This is her most mature role to date, and it feels like she’s stepping into a new phase of her career.

With her recent engagement to Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, it’s not surprising that she might want to make the transition to older audiences. The work Steinfeld did as a teen and young adult has set the stage to be a megastar. After the massive box office success of Sinners, we're sure her next role is already knocking on her door. We will be first in line to see whatever she does!