Sitting cross-legged in a pleather booth at a Hollywood diner, Anna Kendrick is wearing a
sweatshirt and jeans. She has no makeup on, and most of her frizzy hair is pulled back in a band. She looks like a hot mess. I have to say that because I promised Kendrick I would. "Just say, She looks like a hot mess!'" she says, laughing. After a busy weekend of cleaning, packing suitcases, and binge-watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Kendrick tells me she considered wearing "half of what I wore to bed" to our Monday breakfast but changed her mind after she remembered "that point in the article where they're like, She swanned in looking blah, blah, blah.'"
Kendrick isn't really one to fuss about her looks, and these days she wouldn't have time anyway. The 29-year-old currently has eight films on her roster, including Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the musical smash, out May 15. Those suitcases? They're for Atlanta, where she'll finish shooting the assassin thriller The Accountant with Ben Affleck. "If I could do everything, I would," she says. "The work revives you."
Performing has been the insistent backbeat of Kendrick's life. Growing up in Maine with middle-class parents who at times struggled with unemployment—William, a teacher, and Janice, an accountant—she landed a Tony nod at age 12 for High Society; since then the triple threat has acted, sung, and danced her way from opera to Broadway to Sundance. Kendrick's 2010 Oscar-nominated turn in Up in the Air opposite George Clooney (who's called her "wildly talented") and her full-throated Cinderella in 2014's Into the Woods further proved she's one of the most versatile women in show business. But it's her role in Pitch Perfect as Beca, the wisecracking coed who falls into a cappella, that won everyone's hearts. (The music video for her solo "Cups" has gotten 200 million YouTube views.)
And Kendrick's willingness to be real—versus hiding behind the usual predictable stream of staged selfies—has made her a heroine to women. She's earned nearly 4 million followers on Twitter (and a new book deal!) with her self-deprecating, nonceleb-like jokes about her height, her Invisalign retainer, and her addiction to reality TV. Honestly, if you forget that she performed at the Oscars or that she reportedly dates The Fault in Our Stars' cinematographer Ben Richardson, you'll see Kendrick is still that girl from Portland, Maine, who likes to tell a good joke.
Read an excerpt of her cover interview below and check out her photo-shoot gallery here. To read the full interview, pick up the June issue of Glamour on newsstands or download it for your tablet now.
GLAMOUR: You seem to enjoy demystifying and, at times, even mocking your own fame—including cover interviews like, uh, this.
ANNA KENDRICK: The tagline is always, "She's taking Hollywood by storm but playing by her own rules." I'm like, we're all kind of doing it the same way everybody's ever done it. I live in the same kind of house as everybody else. I drive the same kind of car. I eat the same kind of food. Although I am making a superior carrot soup lately!
GLAMOUR: But you've said you're a terrible cook.
AK: Maybe I am stepping up in the world. Pretty soon I'm going to be 30 and making dope carrot soup and will have my sh-t together.
GLAMOUR: That's right, you'll turn 30 this year. How does that feel?
AK: I felt different at 29 because 29, to me, is 30. There are times when I still feel like an actual toddler in a grown-up—well, semi-grown-up—body. But other times I can't wait to actually be 30, just so I can say things like, "I'm 30. I don't have time for that. F--k off!"
GLAMOUR: When do you feel like an adult?
AK: I feel like I've got it together when things are going well with my family [Janice, William, and older brother Michael]. I was in Maine for Christmas, and it felt like, I'm a grown-up visiting my hometown. I'm really happy that my family is happy and healthy.
GLAMOUR: When do you feel like a toddler?
AK: I guess I feel I'm masquerading as an adult when I don't have the kind of friendships and routines that I thought you were supposed to have as an adult. It's the "Friends lied to me!" syndrome.
GLAMOUR: Adulthood isn't sitting at Central Perk with Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow, who never seem to work?
AK: Yeah. One of the surprises of being a grown-up is embracing the fact that you see your friends when you are both available. It's not like you hang out all the time.… It's just the reality.
GLAMOUR: In Pitch Perfect 2 the Bellas' friendships are evolving—
AK: Oh, I see what you've done there.
GLAMOUR: Smooth segue, right? So what was it like going back to work with everyone on the sequel?
AK: I feel lucky to be in close proximity for so long to women who are so different from one another. After filming you homogenize everybody as this great group of girls; when you're back you get to experience everyone as an individual again, and that's really nice.
GLAMOUR: What do you think your costars forgot about you as an individual, a quirk they were reminded of when you reunited?
AK: When I did the Oscars, the costume designer Julie Weiss said that someone told her I was "10 percent defiant." Later she was like, "They meant that as a compliment." I was like, "Even if they hadn't, I took it as one." Maybe that's it?
GLAMOUR: What's defiant about you?
AK: I think when you have an older brother—actually, any siblings at all—[you grow up with] a sense of what's fair and what's not fair. And I think that sense of justice carries over into adult life, even over into things that aren't really important.
GLAMOUR: Let's talk about injustice: There were two Ace Ventura movies, and Dumb and Dumber got a sequel too. But I can't think of a female-led comedy with a sequel. There are so few.
AK: Charlie's Angels, Miss Congeniality are the ones I can think of.
GLAMOUR: So do you feel extra pressure to make this sequel succeed?
AK: For people whose job it is to make sure we make money, there's a lot of pressure. [But] Kay Cannon wrote the script knowing all of us now, and it's even better than the first one. And she wrote it after she'd just had a baby! I was like, "You're some kind of unicorn."
GLAMOUR: The first film became a cult hit.
AK: History gets rewritten as if Pitch Perfect were this sleeper hit. It made $65 million [at the box office]—nothing to sneeze at—[but] it found its audience on video-on-demand, HBO, and iTunes. It wasn't an appointment movie to watch with all your friends. I'm excited to see whether the sequel is a date movie or a groups-of-women movie.
GLAMOUR: The audience for the first film was 74 percent women on opening weekend.
AK: Yeah. [But] it's not like the humor excludes men. My favorite thing on Twitter is guys being like, "Listen: I'm not a pussy, but Pitch Perfect is awesome." I'm like, "I didn't think you were a pussy, sir."
GLAMOUR: The sequel is bigger, with pyrotechnics, lasers, and smoke machines. You even have a scene with Snoop Dogg.
AK: I'm telling you, the man had nail art: clear with gold tips and gold designs over the clear. The man is a trendsetter.
GLAMOUR: He's always been cool. Your character, Beca, tries to be cool but can't pull it off.
AK: I feel like you can't get an audience to like your character if she's actually cool, but you can if she's trying to be cool and sometimes fails. My favorite Beca is Struggling, Awkward Beca because I think that's who we all are. We want to be like Cool Beca, and we're not.
GLAMOUR: Pitch Perfect 2 is one of eight films you've got in the works. In 2013 you said, "I think I made too many movies last year." It sounded like you were going to slow down. So…what happened?
AK: I know. I like working hard, as long as it's not motivated by fear. I don't want to keep doing it just because I'm afraid to take a break.
GLAMOUR: Meaning, the fear that this might end?
AK: There's always that. As an actress you're perpetually about to be unemployed. That fear—when you have two parents who worked 9-to-5 jobs and went through periods of being unemployed—is real. Those were not welcome times in my childhood. Working 14 hours a day isn't sustainable, but I prefer it [to doing fewer films]. I might as well be doing the thing that I wanted to do my whole life.
GLAMOUR: The discussion about gender bias in Hollywood is more public than ever. What do you make of that?
AK: All the films nominated [for a Best Picture Oscar] this year had male leads. Like, every single one. So I'm glad that [equality's] feeling like a bigger issue now.
GLAMOUR: How are actresses treated differently than actors?
AK: There's [a film I'm considering] now where I have to wait for all the male roles to be cast before I can even become a part of the conversation. Part of me gets that. [But] part of me is like, "What the f--k? You have to cast for females based on who's cast as males?" To me, the only explanation is that there are so many f--king talented girls, and from a business standpoint it's easier to find women to match the men. I totally stand by the belief that there are 10 unbelievably talented women for every role.
GLAMOUR: Given that, do you feel more competitive with other actresses because you're fighting for a small number of great roles?
AK: I don't think it makes you more competitive. If anything, it bonds you because we're all dealing with the same problem.
To read the full interview, pick up the June issue of *Glamour *on newsstands or download it for your tablet now.
