LOS ANGELES – She landed the part by lying about her age: Quvenzhane Wallis was five, and the filmmakers were only auditioning girls at least six years old.
But they believed her fib and tried her out — and were blown away, giving her the starring role in the low-budget “Beasts of the Southern Wild” over 4,000 other hopefuls.
And now she could become the youngest ever winner of the best actress Oscar, at the 85th Academy Awards, the climax of Hollywood’s annual awards season, next weekend.
“It was very clear …you don’t meet six-year-olds who have that quality,” said director Benh Zeitlin, recalling her audition. “She just had this natural charisma and focus and fierceness and wiseness and morality.
“Coming out of a body that small and a mind that young, it’s almost alien and alien in a way that goes kind of straight at your heart .. It’s her perspective that unlocks the truth in the film.”
That charisma is obvious when you see Wallis being interviewed to promote the movie over recent months, even before it was elevated to the stratosphere by being nominated for four Oscars in January, including best picture.
“I was in my bedroom half asleep,” Wallis told Jay Leno, about waking last month to learn she was nominated alongside Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Naomi Watts and Emmanuelle Riva, the oldest ever best actress nominee, at 85.
“So nothing reacted on the outside, but I was like flipping cartwheels and stuff on the inside,” she told the talk show host, whom she admonished — cutely — for asking her a question more appropriate for the director.
