Twilight New Moon

Twilight New Moon – ANNA Kendrick was filming two movies at once – The Twilight Saga: New Moon in Vancouver and the George Clooney-starring Up in the Air – in various parts of the US. As she flew between sets, she felt as though one of the jobs was playtime with the kids and the other was matching it with the grown-ups. “Can you guess which one was which?” the 24-year-old teases, breaking into laughter. In the Twilight movies, Kendrick plays Jessica, vamp-lover Bella’s totally popular BFF at high school. In Up in the Air, she’s Natalie, a straight-A college graduate speed-climbing her way up the corporate ladder and stepping on the toes of her new colleague, the set-in-his ways firer-for-hire Ryan Bingham (Clooney). “There was something really liberating about going to the Twilight set in between shooting pieces of Up in the Air,” she says. “The character let me be a little more loose and a little more flexible, because Natalie’s so rigid. But, to be perfectly honestly, George is just as big a kid as anybody on the Twilight set.” While Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner are besieged by paparazzi and have their faces splashed across endless magazine covers, Kendrick has been able to watch the Twilight phenomenon from the back seat. As one of the vampire movie franchise’s supporting players, she doesn’t have to deal with the glare. “I’ve been really, really lucky to be a part of it and not really be affected in my daily life. I do feel like I kinda get to watch from the sidelines, and that makes me pretty lucky, quite frankly.” She has been an interested onlooker as the profiles of the star trio have exploded, but she can’t say that she understands. “They’re probably the only people on Earth who really understand what they’re going through, so I certainly don’t pretend to be able to empathise completely. Though Kendrick has performed on stage since before she was 10, her film career is still in its infancy, so day one on the set with a personality as big as Clooney was nerve-racking. On top of that, she was “really, really ill”. “I was gonna be the girl that showed up and was giving everybody a cold on the first day on set,” she recalls. “George immediately started teasing me about being sick, and making a big show of avoiding me, and then telling me he was just kidding.” Kendrick just set about trying to pretend she wasn’t out of her depth. “The entire time, I was trying to prove that I was a grown-up and a professional,” she says. “It was also the first time I’d been the youngest person on set. But I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive cast and crew.” Nerves had to make way for chutzpah by the time Kendrick got around to her showpiece scene with Clooney – no, not a kiss, but a royal dressing-down for the seasoned charmer. “So many people ask if I’m upset that I didn’t get to kiss George Clooney, and I’m actually thrilled to have been able to yell at George Clooney in this movie. I think it’s infinitely more satisfying than kissing him,” she says. The Up in the Air role was tailor-made for Kendrick by writer-director Jason Reitman, after she caught his eye in the little-seen 2007 indie flick Rocket Science. “For a film not many people in the public saw, it certainly has been seen by a lot of filmmakers,” Kendrick laughs, crediting the movie for every job she has won since. But Reitman, whose previous film was the much loved Juno, didn’t tell Kendrick she was his muse before she auditioned. “He kept that very well concealed, actually. I didn’t think the audition went well, I thought he didn’t like me at all. I was really disappointed because I thought the script was absolutely gorgeous and I thought I just kinda blew it. So I couldn’t believe it when my agent told me they were going to offer me the job,” she says. Though she feels a great deal of affection for the uptight perfectionist she plays in Up in the Air, Kendrick can’t quite relate to Natalie’s in-your-face ambition. “I was probably a little more ambitious at 10 than I am now,” she says. Her performance, however, has already had her nominated for best supporting actress at the Critics Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Golden Globes. An Oscar nomination seems a certainty. Rated: MA15+ Released: Today Starring: George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga