OSCAR-winner Jane Campion is one of Australasia’s most acclaimed directors. Now her 18-year-old daughter, Alice Englert, has a movie career of her own, writes Neala Johnson.

Your mother is a Kiwi, you were born in Sydney … where’s home?
It’s a bit of everywhere. What I realised is, watching some old home videos, I’ve always had a weird accent. It’s because I spent a lot of time on film sets. But Australia will always be home … I sound like the Qantas ad, don’t I?

But you’re about to base yourself in London. Why?
Well, I’m pale … and that’s it (laughs). I know it’ll work ‘cos I’m pale and I like jackets. Done!

Your CV – UK flicks Ginger & Rosa and In Fear – suggests you’re an indie girl. But your new film Beautiful Creatures is based on a young-adult novel series tipped to be the new Twilight …
It all happened at the same time so it was never one identity or another. To be honest with you, I don’t really believe in all that stuff. The careers that I really appreciate are the people who just do good work and are consistent.

It must be a spin-out to see yourself on billboards all around Los Angeles.
Yup. It’s a little weird. But no one recognises me because I’ve never pulled that face in my life!

In Beautiful Creatures you play a witch who will be claimed for the light or the dark on her 16th birthday. With two parents in the biz (Colin Englert is also a filmmaker), was it inevitable you’d be ‘claimed’ by film?
I knew I was always gonna be in stories, because it’s the only thing I understand properly. I’ve never considered how else to spend my time.
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Another ‘Beautiful Creatures’ interview for USA Today.

GALLERY LINKS
Studio Photoshoots > Outtakes & Sessions > From 2013 > Session 008

LOS ANGELES — There’s a storm brewing at the box office, set to leave an enchanted path for two young actors in its wake.

This weekend, Alden Ehrenreich, 23, and Alice Englert, 18, transform into Beautiful Creatures, a supernatural love story based on the popular southern Gothic young-adult novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, that — to quote Hollywood — fills an empty slot left by a money-minting machine called Twilight.

To Ehrenreich and Englert, Creatures is a nuanced, wit-infused departure from the vampire-meets-mortal franchise (no offense). To the world, they may be the new Edward and Bella.

Ehrenreich plays Ethan Wate, a frustrated (mortal) teenager whose book collection provides an intellectual oasis inside the conservative community of Gatlin, S.C. Enter new student Lena Duchannes (Englert), a magnetic free spirit with frightening abilities. She’s a Caster, what the series calls its witch-like creatures whose strengthening powers turn Light (good) or Dark (evil) at a Claiming on her rapidly approaching 16th birthday.
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Alice and ‘Beautiful Creatures’ co-star Alden Ehrenreich were interviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

GALLERY LINKS
Studio Photoshoots > Outtakes & Sessions > From 2013 > Session 007

“I do suck fat. I will suck the fat off my steak,” actress Alice Englert warns as she slides into a booth at Musso & Frank in Hollywood on a dreary, overcast day. “I just want to prepare you in advance that I’m known to be disgusting when I eat steak.”

Alden Ehrenreich, her costar in the new film “Beautiful Creatures,” is unfazed by her eagerness. Perhaps it’s because after enduring a shoot involving sweltering, 90-degree Louisiana days, food poisoning and Southern accents, the two on-screen sweethearts have an easy familiarity. Or maybe it’s that they’re enjoying a few final days of relative anonymity before their movie breaks wide and the critics and masses will determine whether the film, a supernatural tale of young love, becomes a phenomenon on the order of “Twilight” or falls flat as a pale imitation.

The four-book “Beautiful Creatures” series from authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl has sold 1.3-million copies in the U.S. and currently resides at No. 2 on the New York Times children’s bestseller list. Teenage girls and their mothers are eager for the big-screen adaptation, which centers on a group of witches hidden in a small, conservative Southern town. Likewise, Hollywood would welcome a film that fills the void left by the conclusion of the “Twilight” series.
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In Beautiful Creatures, Alice Englert plays Lena Ravenwood, a southern teen in Gatlin, GA dealing with her powers as a caster. When I spoke with Englert by phone, her real Australian voice greeted me with worldly charm. Acting! The film based on the book by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl deals with the power and curse that comes with being a young caster in love, and the prospect of being claimed for good or evil on her 16th birthday. Englert comes from a cinematic lineage. Her mother is director Jane Campion and father is second unit director Colin Englert. As an actor, Englert has already racked up several festival movies (we saw Ginger & Rosa and In Fear already) but you may discover her for the first time in this visual effects extravaganza, adapted by Richard LaGravenese.

Alice Englert: Hi Fred, how are you?

CraveOnline: Good, thanks, Alice. It’s great to talk to you.
Oh, we’ve only just said hello though. I hope it’s as good as the expectations.

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Alice and Alden talk ‘Beautiful Creatures’ with RedEye‘s Dana Moran in Chicago. I have added a new photoshoot and you can watch/read the interview below.

GALLERY LINKS
Studio Photoshoots > Outtakes & Sessions > From 2013 > Session 006

Loner newcomer captivates resident misfit. Their chemistry crackles, but there’s something a little … different … about one of them. Put away your silver daggers–you haven’t caught the rebirth of the “Twilight” series.

In the highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of teen romance-thriller novel “Beautiful Creatures” (opening Thursday), relative unknowns Alden Ehrenreich (“Tetro”) and Alice Englert (the upcoming “Ginger and Rosa”) star as star-crossed lovers Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. He’s a Gatlin, South Carolina boy with a penchant for Kurt Vonnegut and Bob Dylan; she’s the new girl in town who just happens to be—gasp—a “caster,” a nicer term for witch.

At the Trump International Hotel, L.A. native Ehrenreich, 23, and 19-year-old Australian Englert talked about the “basic survival” of high school, their worst adolescent flaws and how they prepared their Southern accents.
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Following the new photoshoot, now you can read the interview of Alice for Wonderland magazine.

As 2012 came to a close it was pretty hard to miss Alice Englert. Thanks to the poster campaigns for Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa (in which she starred opposite Elle Fanning), and upcoming blockbuster Beautiful Creatures (an awesome-looking fantasy romp, based on the bestselling novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and featuring Englert in her first lead role), it almost seemed like you couldn’t hop on the Tube without seeing her face peering down from the walls.

Which goes to show that at just 18 years old, Englert is already shaping up to be one of the stars of her generation. As if her undeniable acting prowess weren’t enough (her performance in Ginger & Rosa earned her a British Independent Film Award nomination – she’s also an excellent musician. For proof, check YouTube, or the Beautiful Creatures soundtrack, which features one of Englert’s own songs.

What’s more, her mother is the infinitely cool director Jane Campion (responsible for The Piano, In The Cut and Bright Star, among other films). What’s not to love? When Wonderland meets her, she’s not only funny, sharp and terrifyingly intelligent, she’s also wonderfully self-deprecating. Thank goodness, then, that 2013 promises to bring us much more of her.
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