Angourie Rice Interview: The Pressures of Child Acting, High School and Learning to Let it All Go
The young star has made a name for herself in The Nice Guys, Mare of Easttown and the MCU Spider-Man films, but the most pressure didn’t come from the Hollywood system, it often came from herself.
If you were standing opposite Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe at age 14, you might feel pressured from a myriad of monstrous outside forces. Here you are in a major studio picture opposite an Academy Award winning legend from your native Australia, playing the daughter of one of the biggest Ryans out there (and there are some massively talented Ryans these days), all while needing to deliver the razor sharp witty dialogue of Shane Black before you can even legally drive. Yet Angourie Rice at the time apparently only felt the pressure she put on herself.
Best known for her work as Betty Brant in the recent MCU Spider-Man films, and having recently once again proven how well she can work with Academy Award winner in her role as Kate Winslett’s daughter in Mare of Easttown, the rising star feels a kinship with her newest role. Starring in the Paramount+ original film Honor Society. The film follows high school senior, Honor, whose sole focus is getting into Harvard. Willing to do whatever it takes, Honor concocts a plan to take down her top three competitors. Along the way she begins to befriend her competition, and things take a major turn when she unexpectedly falls for her biggest competition, Michael (played by Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo).
The now-21-year-old sat down with FilmSpeak to talk about her real life high school experience, or lack there of. “I traveled a lot and worked throughout high school” says Rice. “So the kind of the longer I stayed at high school, though, the less I was there. Which, which was kind of sad. But you know, I was, I was very fortunate to travel and to get to work.” In fact, being a seasoned traveller and professional actor at such a young age lead to living vicariously through the very characters she played. “My first school dance that I got to go to was in Spider-Man: Homecoming, because we… went to homecoming. I got to where I got to wear a cool dress, and we were in the gym with all the lights, and I thought, ‘huh, this is a school dance. I've never been to one’”.
Gaten Matarazzo (left) and Rice (right) in Honor Society
That doesn’t mean that Rice doesn’t relate to the high school experience of most teenagers, in fact, it might have created a heightened high school career, full of that aforementioned pressure. “All throughout high school, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do very well at school, even though sometimes I couldn't". This created the perfect experience to draw upon for her character in Honor Society. “I really felt so similar to Honor. I was very stressed because I wanted to do really well, so I really connected to it in that sort of way.”
So what advice would Rice have, now that she’s a worldly and wise 21-years-young? Stay calm. These years, while they can be stressful, while they are shaping who you are, are not the most important years of your life, and they certainly don’t define you. Rice says that even in the few years since she graduated, she’s gained some real perspective. “Throughout grade 12 people were telling me, it's not the end of the world if you fail this class, if you don't do this exam, it's fine. And I didn't really believe that. But now in hindsight, it wasn't the end of the world. I don't know why I was so stressed”.
It’s fairly simple, and the film itself gives sage advice on the entire high school experience: “high school is about one thing… getting out of high school”.
Honor Society is streaming now on Paramount+
Check out the full interview with Angourie Rice below:
