If you’re not already familiar with the name Cailee Spaeny, chances are you’d recognize her face.
Or maybe you don’t know Spaeny yet at all, and she’s okay with that, too.
After all, she knows herself.
“I’ve always been hungry,” she toldEmpire.
“It’s a combination of arrogance or blind faith and also being absolutely terrified and insecure.
But from a young age, for some reason I just knew.”
Hollywood knows now, too.
“She has a very natural ability.
“When you have that, people want to watch you.
They feel like they’re watching someone real.”
“I was just so ready.
“I wanted out of this Midwestern box.”
That upbringing in the theater also meant spending a lot of time as the youngest person around.
“My friends were 40-year-olds, who were like moms, or big sisters, or mentors.”
“I was always on a hunt to grow and learn.”
“That was my teacher.
I didn’t go to an acting school.”
Instead, her family took her to Hollywood to audition for bigger parts than she could find in Missouri.
“I was begging my mom to take me,” she explained to 417 Magazine.
“Basically I told everyone I knew I was moving to LA.
My family kept making the drives out there.”
She was praying every night, ‘like let something happen.'”
Thankfully, it wouldn’t be long before Hollywood knew Cailee Spaeny’s name.
“I went full out for this audition.
“I actually slammed myself down on the ground.”
I’m on an island on my first day in this giant haunted warehouse,” she recalled.
“It just kept getting like, ‘What?
I just rolled with the punches like I knew what I was doing.”
After the sci-fi spectacle, more roles quickly followed.
Suddenly, Spaeny’s career was off and running.
“I was just staring at the back of her head the whole night.
I couldn’t believe this is my life,” Spaeny recalled.
Eventually, they were able to chat.
Years before that meeting, though, Spaeny tried to be a singer-songwriter just like Swift.
“We used to do talent shows together!”
“Cailee and Kayleigh.
She would always win, though.”
That’s what we call versatility.
In director Alex Garland’s “Devs,” Spaeny played Lyndon, a role written as a boy.
Garland was taken with her audition, and he gave her the role without re-writing the character.
“I just knew that I was gonna be safe.
If it was any other director, I’d be like, ‘This is too weird.’
But I knew Alex does things like that, and it just sort of works.”
The show gave Spaeny a chance to work with thestunningly talented Kate Winslet.
“She’s just f***ing Kate,” Spaeny told Empire.
“Heart on her sleeve, she is what she is.
Those are the people that I look up to.”
To that end, Spaeny went public with her first high-profile relationship.
“I’m trying to look pretty too now.”
“I steal most of his vintage tees.
He has a pretty impressive collection,” she revealed.
“I feel like I helped Raymond get in touch with his feminine side a bit.”
Aside from that one joint interview, the two young stars managed to keep their relationship pretty private.
These days, they no longer follow one another on social media.
We won’t speculate, but you’ve got the option to make of that what you will.
“Like Priscilla’s family, my family made incredible sacrifices to support that decision,” she toldDeadline.
Coppola told The New York Times, “[Spaeny] can express so much while barely doing anything.
She has that rare ability to say so much, just with her face, her eyes.”
“Priscilla” paired Spaeny with another rising star: Jacob Elordi.
“Basically, we’re just two nerds.”
Still, she told Empire that she’s not a fan of playing dress-up.
“I find [glamour] boring,” she told Empire.
I hope I never slide into that.”
“Any way we can stimulate the skin and create a hydrated glow from within is key.”
“You just know when you know!
And it really felt like me!
It felt like the perfect first Met look,” she toldHarper’s Bazaar.
“And it was just ultra chic.
The silhouette was just gorgeous.”
“The ending sequence was really fun because I composed the shots.
I chose what shots I wanted to take,” Spaeny proudly toldEntertainment Weekly.
A few came out blurry, so they re-did it with professionals following Spaeny’s lead.
“We went around and grabbed those actual shots that I had chosen.”
and I go, ‘Oh God, don’t say that!'"
“But if we’re just comparing it to other films that I’ve done: yeah!
It was very intense.”
But then when you look closely, there’s the darkness."
“The second you see that creature, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
And it’s still shocking,” she said.
“I think I need to move on.
Find something else,” Spaeny reflected.
“I am growing up.”
“Cailee Spaeny is the best actress of her generation,” one fan wrote onX, formerly Twitter.
A movie star, for sure."
“This could really easily be a chapter of my life and not my whole life.
There’s only so many tricks an actor has up their sleeve,” she said.
“I went, Oh, what are the other options?”
“Is this always going to be my life?”
Time will tell whether Spaeny settles into her fame or steps away from it.
All that’s clear is that, right now, her transformation is still ongoing.
