Mia Wasikowska – MovieActors.com

About Mia Wasikowska (1989 – ____)

Mia Wasikowska was born and raised in Canberra, Australia. She attended Cook Primary School, Ainslie Primary School and Canberra High School, as well as Karabar High School in Queanbeyan, which neighbours Canberra. She is the middle child of three, with an older sister, Jess, and a younger brother, Kai. Her mother, Marzena Wasikowska, is a Polish-born photographer, while her father, John Reid, is an Australian photographer and collagist.

In 1998, when she was eight years old, Wasikowska and her family moved to Szczecin, Poland, for a year, after her mother had received a grant to produce a collection of work based on her own experience of having emigrated to Australia in 1974, at the age of eleven. Wasikowska and her siblings took part in the production as subjects; she explained to Johanna Schneller of The Globe and Mail in July 2010, "We never had to smile or perform. We weren't always conscious of being photographed. We'd just do our thing, and she'd take pictures of us."

At the age of nine Wasikowska began training as a ballerina with Jackie Hallahan at the Canberra Dance Development Centre, with hopes of going professional. She began dancing en pointe at thirteen, and was training 35 hours a week in addition to attending school full-time, her daily routine consisting of leaving school in the early afternoon and dancing until nine o'clock at night. A spur on her heel hampered her dancing. Her passion for ballet also waned due to the increasing pressure to achieve physical perfection and her growing dissatisfaction with the industry in general, and she quit at fourteen. However, she credits ballet with improving her ability to handle her nerves in auditions.

At the same time, she had been exposed to European and Australian cinema at an early age, particularly Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy and Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career. Although she was shy and averse to performing during her school years, she became inspired to break into acting after watching Holly Hunter in The Piano and Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. Despite having no prior acting experience, Wasikowska looked up twelve Australian talent agencies on the Internet and contacted them all, receiving only one response; she successfully arranged a meeting following persistent callbacks.

Wasikowska landed her first acting role in 2004, with a two-episode stint on the Australian soap All Saints. She had just turned fifteen when she was cast in her Australian film debut, 2006's Suburban Mayhem, for which she received a nomination for a Young Actor's AFI Award. That same year, she also appeared in her first short film, Lens Love Story, in which she had no dialogue.

In 2007, Wasikowska appeared in the crocodile horror film Rogue, alongside Radha Mitchell and Sam Worthington. She observed quietly on the set; fellow actor Stephen Curry noted, "We didn't hear a peep out of her for three weeks, which earned her the nickname of 'Rowdy.'" She beat out nearly 200 other actresses for a part in the drama September, being cast on the spot by director Peter Carstairs following her audition. She then starred in Spencer Susser's acclaimed short film I Love Sarah Jane, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

At the age of seventeen, Wasikowska received her first big break role in the United States when she was cast as Sophie, a suicidal gymnast, in HBO's acclaimed weekly drama In Treatment, after she auditioned for the role by videotape. The part required her to leave school in Canberra and move to Los Angeles for three months, while enrolling in correspondence courses. She earned critical acclaim for her performance as the troubled teenager treated by psychotherapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne), which included praise for her excellent American accent. Wasikowska revealed in an October 2008 interview with Variety that she was something of a mimic as a child and that the large influx of American films and TV shows made it easier for Australians to pick up the accent.

The exposure from the show led to Wasikowska picking up her first American film appearances. She played the role of Chaya, the young wife of Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell), in Defiance. Director Edward Zwick cast her without having seen her in In Treatment, explaining to the Australian edition of Vogue, "Her inner life is so vivid that it comes across even when she's being still." Her next role was that of aviation pioneer Elinor Smith in Mira Nair's 2009 biopic Amelia. In June 2008, due to her work on In Treatment, she won an Australians in Film Breakthrough Award.

Wasikowska played the supporting role of Pamela Choat in the 2009 Southern Gothic independent film That Evening Sun, opposite Hal Holbrook. Director Scott Teems, seeking a young actress who bore a resemblance to Sissy Spacek, initially balked at the casting director's first suggestion of Wasikowska for the role, as he was adamant at casting all native Southerners for the sake of authenticity. However, after auditions with other actresses were unsuccessful, Teems relented and summoned Wasikowska for auditioning. She had only two hours to prepare, which she spent watching clips of Coal Miner's Daughter online in order to quickly learn a Southern accent, and impressed Teems enough that she gained the distinction of being the only non-American actor cast in the film. She was nominated for a 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, which she lost to Mo'Nique (Precious).

In July 2008, after a lengthy search, Wasikowska was cast as the eponymous heroine in Tim Burton's retelling of Alice in Wonderland, alongside Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway. She sent a videotaped audition to casting directors in London, and her first live reading in Los Angeles occurred on the same day as her Evening Sun audition. After three more auditions in London — which saw her flying back and forth from Australia to England in just as many weeks — she was awarded the role. Burton cited Wasikowska's "old-soul quality" as a catalyst in casting her: "Because you’re witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that."

Wasikowska portrayed a nineteen-year-old Alice returning to Wonderland for the first time in over a decade after fleeing from an unwanted marriage proposal. Her affinity for the character played a part in her desire for the role, as she had read the Lewis Carroll books as a child and was a fan of Jan Švankmajer's 1988 stop-motion film Alice. She also saw Burton's version of the classic story as a chance to explore a deeper characterization of Alice, to whom she felt young women her age could relate, for which she drew on personal experiences. "Alice has a certain discomfort within herself, within society and among her peers; I have definitely felt similarly about all of those things, so I could really understand her not fitting in. Alice also an observer who is thinking a lot, and that's similar to how I am."

For Lisa Cholodenko's indie comedy The Kids Are All Right, Wasikowska was cast as Joni, the bookish daughter of a lesbian couple (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) who was conceived via artificial insemination. At her younger brother's (Josh Hutcherson) request, she seeks out their biological father (Mark Ruffalo). During shooting, she successfully campaigned to have Joni wear pajamas in several home scenes, as a nod to what the actress herself regularly did while home in Australia.

Wasikowska was honored with the Hollywood Awards' Breakthrough Actress Award, which was presented to her by Bryce Dallas Howard, and she won the Australian Film Institute International Award for Best Actress for her performance in Alice in Wonderland. According to Forbes, Alice in Wonderland was amongst the highest-grossing films of 2010 with $1.025 billion. As of January 2017, it is the 25th-highest-grossing film of all time.

From March to May 2010, Wasikowska filmed Cary Fukunaga's adaptation of Jane Eyre, in which she starred as the title character opposite Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester. She began reading the novel after completion of Alice in Wonderland, during which she asked her agent if a script existed. Two months later, she received a script and was asked to meet with Fukunaga. However, since Fukunaga was unfamiliar with her prior work at the time and was therefore undecided about casting her, he later sought the opinion of director Gus Van Sant, with whom Wasikowska had previously filmed the 2011 release Restless. He said to BlackBook magazine in February 2011, "Gus wrote back: 'Cast her.'" Her work on the film resulted in a scheduling conflict that forced her to withdraw from the lead in Julia Leigh's 2011 Australian independent film Sleeping Beauty, and she was replaced by Emily Browning. Meryl Streep in her 2012 Golden Globe acceptance speech, announced: "How about Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre?"

Wasikowska turned down a part in Robert Redford's 2011 film The Conspirator in order to play the female lead in Restless, which she filmed from November to December 2009. The portrayal of her character, a terminally ill sixteen-year-old, required her to crop her long hair. Though she was one of many names shortlisted for consideration in casting the role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, she declined to audition for the part due to time constraints. From December 2010 to February 2011, Wasikowska filmed Rodrigo García's Albert Nobbs, for which she was a last-minute replacement for Amanda Seyfried.

In 2011, Wasikowska shot the small supporting role of Shia LaBeouf's character's love interest in John Hillcoat's Lawless. Later in the year, she filmed the lead in Park Chan-wook's English-language debut, Stoker.

Filming of her next project, Richard Ayoade's The Double, began in the UK in May 2012. In July, she shot Jim Jarmusch's vampire drama Only Lovers Left Alive, in which she plays the younger sister of Tilda Swinton's character. Filming of Tracks, director John Curran's adaptation of the Robyn Davidson memoir of the same name, began in October 2012 in Australia, with Wasikowska in the lead role.

Wasikowska made her directorial debut on a segment of a film adaptation of The Turning, a collection of short stories by Australian author Tim Winton. The film premiered in August 2013 at the Melbourne International Film Festival. In July 2013, Wasikowska began filming David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars in Toronto; the film was released in 2014.

In 2013, Wasikowska replaced Emma Stone in the Guillermo del Toro directed Crimson Peak. She appeared alongside Charlie Hunnam, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain.

In May 2015, Wasikowska joined the cast of Cédric Jimenez's upcoming historical thriller film titled HHHH, based on the novel of the same name, starring alongside Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O'Connell and Jack Reynor.

Wasikowska reprised the role of Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass. She appeared in the upcoming David Zellner western film Damsel, alongside Robert Pattinson. In February 2017, it was announced that she starred with Christopher Abbott in Nicolas Pesce's upcoming thriller Piercing, which is based on Ryu Murakami's 1994 novel of the same name.

In her spare time, Wasikowska is an avid photographer, often chronicling her travels and capturing images of her film sets with a Rolleiflex camera. During production of Jane Eyre, she had a secret pocket sewn into one of her costumes in order to conceal a smaller digital camera that she used between takes. One of her on-set images, featuring Fukunaga and Jane Eyre costar Jamie Bell, was selected as a finalist in the 2011 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Wasikowska resides in Bronte, New South Wales. She dated Jesse Eisenberg, her co-star in The Double, from 2013 to 2015.

Mia Wasikowska's movie credits include...

Mia Wasikowska's television credits include...

Memorable Quotes by Mia Wasikowska

“ When I decided to pursue acting at 15, I heard that you had to have an agent to do film and television, so I did a Google search for acting agencies in Sydney. I hounded one to take me on and started auditioning. I did some films in Australia, and then I started working in America on In Treatment (2008) when I was 17. ”

[on Jane Eyre (2011)] “ The challenge is that the book, start to finish, is Jane Eyre's internal monologue - everything we know is because of what we're hearing directly from her. So my concern was 'How do we keep that intensity?' I was excited about seeing how we could portray all that's going on inside, all that she's observing and feeling, thinking. ”

“ What I like about film is it explores imperfections. That was something that really attracted me. ”

“ I really love doing things that are different and challenge me in different ways. And I think to remain interested and excited by acting it's really great to have such diverse opportunities, and I feel really lucky that I've been able to do that so far. ”

“ It's never been about the blockbusters and making a huge ton of money. It's always been about wanting to do projects about the things that I think are important to be out there, because there's a lot of stuff that probably doesn't need to be. ”

“ My earliest childhood memory is walking down the corridor with my sister Jess in the middle of the night to see my brother Kai being born in the living room. ”

Things You May Not Know About Mia Wasikowska

Her last name is pronounced "vash-i-kovska".

She completed school via the Karabar High School Distance Education Centre, a form of correspondence school based in Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia, just outside of Canberra, so that she could continue acting while still in High School.

Mia revealed on Late Night with Seth Meyers that her real birthday is not October 14, 1989, as shown all over the Internet. It is her "fake" birthday and when people contact her on this date, she knows that they do not know her.

Worked alongside several animals on the set of Tracks (2013). She had to handpick one snake, among a selection of seven, that she wanted to share scenes with. Also, she was given three days in a "camel boot camp", where one of the instructors was Robyn Davidson herself, the woman she portrays in the film.

According to Nicole Kidman, Wasikowska was always reading between takes on the set of Stoker, including the works of Anton Chekhov, David Mamet and Tennessee Williams.

She replaced Emma Stone in Crimson Peak.