Secretly Canadian? ANNA KENDRICK APOLOGIZES TOO MUCH IN HER MEMOIR, SCRAPPY LITTLE NOBODY
As a sort of Shirley Temple for our time, Anna Kendrick has carved out an image – both in her movies and public persona – that comes across as charming and endearing, but also precocious.
It’s a dangerous word to stamp on a 31- year- old actress, best known for Pitch Perfect, who seems a perennial “it girl,” but it was a fortunate one for a child star, which is how Kendrick began her career in the early ’90s, on Broadway, no less.
With a Tony- nominated role in High Society before she even hit double digits, Kendrick carved out a niche on the New York stage for having a voice that was far larger than her stature. In fact, though her size (she’s now 5’ 2) has always been her greatest insecurity in life, it’s her greatest asset on screen: in Hollywood, playing younger for a woman is typically a bonus. “Being tiny was a good thing, being loud was a good thing,” she writes in her debut memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody. “I had somewhere to channel it all.”
At just 10 years old, Kendrick was able to secure a talent agent on a trip to New York City with her mom by singing “Tomorrow” from Annie and “that was basically it. That was all I had to do.” She goes on to explain how she can’t offer much advice to anyone entering the industry because it came so easy for her, something that always made her feel like a “lucky little jackass.”
With parents who devoutly supported her as a child, driving from her hometown in Maine to New York City nearly every week to take her to auditions – or even temporarily relocating to the city, all the while struggling to pay the bills – Kendrick’s family and support system were key in keeping her “sane” and the rare child actor to grow up “without the drug addiction.”
Balancing a double life like “a loud unsexy James Bond,” Kendrick’s school days in Maine felt average and static compared to acting. She ultimately resisted college in favour of no longer “putting off my real life” and moved to Hollywood at 17. Kendrick’s move from small- town girl to Hollywood star is not a new story, except in this case there is no struggle or strife to colour that tried- and- true narrative, which is great news for the actress, but not so much the writer.
While her rise to success certainly seems lucky, it was clearly based on talent that thrived in Kendrick at a very young age, earning her a Tony Award nomination at eight and an Oscar nomination at 24. Precocious though she may be, the actressturned-author’s charm is as evident on the page as it is onscreen. But she works overtime to seemingly make up for her lack of struggle, issuing modesty at every turn.
Kendrick is so bashful about her “l uck” t hat it borders on apologetic. For her to be even slightly l ess modest would be slightly more complicated – and all the more interesting.
When describing the Oscars, Kendrick dedicates an entire chapter to the guilt of suddenly being labelled a rising star. Instead of feeling like the curtain has been raised to reveal the other side of celebrity, yet again it feels like more reticence from Kendrick. It’s endearing, but superfluous, as is much of Scrappy Little Nobody.
While the memoir avoids a completely cliché rags- to- riches story, it also avoids any sort of complex coming- of- age tale altogether. While dedicating a chapter to her biggest breaks, there are no stories of how she was cast on both Twilight and Up In The Air ( the movie that snagged her Oscar nod in 2009, alongside George Clooney), or going from working on independent films to tent-poles with A- list co- workers. And despite an entire section dedicated to her experiences with men, there’s not a single mention of her four-year relationship with Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright, whom she met on the set of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Even when making the few disparaging comments about actors with whom she’s worked or celebrities of whom she’s critical, Kendrick still offers an overly apologetic note after – clarifying that she has no ill will and respects them all for what they do. She concludes the book with a self-deprecating “bonus reading group guide,” with each question poking fun at jokes she has made in previous chapters seemingly at others’ expense, which ultimately subtracts from what are actually the book’s funniest anecdotes.
The moments that Kendrick does dig a little deeper offer the most to chew on – for example, detailing her loneliness when first moving to Los Angeles by herself, but slowly learning to thrive, even as she was still unemployed. She’s also surprisingly candid about her first relationships in her early 20s, and her first experiences with sex and learning to navigate the dating world ( perhaps most relatably, “falling for boys who didn’t like me back”). She openly admits how much she would love for a man to “take the wheel” in her life, but at the same time she is frank about consistently going after the wrong men, partially fooled by their introversion, partially tricked by her own fear of commitment. It is almost as if there is a crack in the Kendrick shell – a vulnerability. And that is, finally, a truly effortless endearment.
Even though Scrappy Little Nobody doesn’t offer as much substance as it could, it’s as sweet and easy a read as a Kendrick film, particularly if you’re a fan. But on the final page of the book, as a footnote, she writes, in true Kendrick style, “Oh man. Is my Wikipedia page going to say ‘author’ now? That’s gonna make me look like such a dick.”
Anna, relax.
IT’S AS SWEET AND EASY A READ AS A KENDRICK FILM.