By Gill Pringle and Travis Johnson
Talking about Thomasin McKenzie, her lead actress in the widely and rightfully acclaimed Leave No Trace, director Debra Granik is effusive and hard-nosed in equal measure. “Thom’s hungry,” she says. “She’s eager, she’s got an appetite, she would like to work, she’s not just having someone tell her what will be good for her career.”
Granik ought to know something about spotting emerging talent. After all, she cast Jennifer Lawrence in her 2010 backwoods drama, Winter’s Bone, which scored the then relatively unknown actress an Oscar nomination and launched her on the way to stardom.
For her part, Granik derides such direct comparisons – “I get so exhausted because, why would we ever take two human beings and try to conflate them?” – but it looks like the New Zealand actress’s career is well and truly trending upwards, with roles in Justin Kurzel’s The True History of the Kelly Gang, David Michod’s The King, and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit just around the corner.
For now, though, it’s McKenzie’s turn in Leave No Trace that is attracting rave notices. McKenzie plays Tom, teenage daughter to Will (Ben Foster), PTSD-stricken veteran who has taken her deep into a national park to live off the grid. When the authorities finally cotton on to the pair’s rustic, isolated lifestyle, it isn’t long before the two of them realise that their lives and their relationship will be changed forever.
McKenzie says growing up in Wellington, New Zealand, helped her plug into the pair’s mindset and way of life. “There is a lot of wildlife, a lot of native wildlife, native birds flying around. I have a lot of access to nature, which really helped me to connect with Tom, my character.” Still, there were skills she needed to pick up. “It was amazing, learning how to live without having to rely on everyday appliances, without having to rely on heaters, or warmth or a tap to get water. Learning how to make a fire and collect water with just the rain, listening to the birds and there’s the signals and the cues they’re giving to you about what’s going on in the forest.”
She also praises her acting partner, Ben Foster, with whom she shares the bulk of the film’s running time, and who she got to know during their woodcraft boot camp. “We were learning all of this stuff together and we weren’t doing a lot of talking, there was a lot of listening and just thinking, which is, you wouldn’t expect it, but that is actually a really bonding thing to do as well; just to be with each other and not have to talk at all with each other.”
Although a relatively new presence on our screens, McKenzie comes from a film industry background – her parents are actor and director Miranda Harcourt (The Hobbit, Bad Blood) and director and writer Stuart McKenzie (The Changeover, For Good), while her maternal grandmother is veteran Kiwi screen figure, Dame Kate Harcourt. The screen is very much a family concern.
“My mum and dad have been in the film industry for a really long time,” she reflects. “So has my grandma, my granddad, my brother did acting – he’s into politics now though -and my sister did acting and my other sister did acting, my whole family is into it. I’ve been surrounded by it my whole life and then just watching and listening to them and looking at their techniques and what they think acting is… They’ve really supported me throughout this whole journey.”
Being immersed in acting for so long, even when she wasn’t directly practising the craft, helped her bring a truthfulness and sincerity to the part. “I wanted to play this character like I want to play all characters, I approach it really genuinely and truthfully, and something I say a lot about acting; it’s not acting, it’s being and it’s just living through someone else and experiencing their way of life and their views and beliefs. It was a really careful and delicate film where there wasn’t a lot of talking, there was just a lot of listening and being with each other; just stepping carefully, not leaving too much of a trace.”
Leave No Trace is screening at the Adelaide Film Festival and is closing the Brisbane International Film Festival.
Read our review here.
