Grounded young Aussie star Angourie Rice pulled off right work-life balance

Rising Aussie star Angourie Rice on going back to school for Honor Society and a possible second season of Mare Of Easttown.

Getting used to life in the spotlight as a global acting star can be difficult at the best of times, but it’s even more challenging for someone in their formative teenage years.

Australian actor Angourie Rice was just 14, and with a few Australian film and TV credits to her name, when she was cast opposite Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in the 2016 action comedy The Nice Guys, earning rave reviews for more than holding her own alongside the two Hollywood A-listers.

She followed that up the following year with a role as Betty Brant in Spider-Man: Homecoming and a bigger role in its 2019 sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home before earning herself a place on Hollywood bible Variety’s Actors To Watch list last year for playing Kate Winslet’s daughter in the acclaimed, Emmy-nominated drama Mare Of Easttown.

Angourie Rice attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Paramount+'s Honor Society at The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills. Picture: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

But during those early years of far-flung shoot locations from Atlanta to London and glittering red carpet premieres, Rice kept her feet on the ground by continuing her high school studies in Australia, creating a healthy work-life balance and keeping her two lives as separate as she possibly could.

“I was very fortunate in that a whole city was home time and then the States was worktime,” she says of Melbourne, which is still home base with her family and dog.

“That’s very rare and I felt very fortunate to have that separation, that as a teenager in high school was very good for my mental health. When I was at school, I was focused on school and family and friends, and then at work I was focused on work.”

But where some students might have found the possibility of stardom and an immediate acting career too great a lure to see their school studies through, self-confessed nerd Rice had no such issues.

“I’ve always loved school,” she says. “I’ve always loved writing essays and reading books and all that nerdy stuff. I would spend many a lunchtime in the library and it was important to me to kind of keep that normalcy, that thing that kind of grounded me.

“To come home and to have a structure to the day, and even when I was on set working, to take a break from work and go and have to do school while they were setting up the camera, it was oddly good for me to kind of decompress in a way.”

Given her love of studying – and her age and youthful appearance – it’s no surprise the 21-year-old Rice has been more than happy to return to the schoolyard in recent projects. She played the teenage cheerleader version of Rebel Wilson’s character in this year’s Netflix comedy Senior Year and is now front and centre in Honor Society, which also stars Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo, and streams on Paramount+ from July 29.

Gaten Matarazzo as Michael Dipnicky and Angourie Rice as Honor Rose in Honor Society, streaming on Paramount+. Picture: Michael Courtney/Nickelodeon/Paramount+

In the teen comedy, she plays the ambitious, smart and manipulative Honor, who is hellbent on escaping her small-town existence for the greener pastures of a prestigious Ivy League college, and is prepared to go to extreme lengths to get ahead of her rivals.

“The good thing about Honor is that I feel very similar to her, and I really connected with her as a character,” Rice says. “I mean, in high school, I was very ambitious, driven, put a lot of pressure on myself – unnecessary pressure – and Honor does the same thing.

“I’ve always loved performing and, when I was a kid, I just wanted attention and approval. I think it’s that thing of wanting to be accepted and wanting approval and validation. That’s what Honor wants as well. Underneath it all, she wants people to like her.”

And if the Machiavellian moves of Honor are giving off vibes of Reese Witherspoon’s (who coincidentally is executive producing Rice’s new miniseries The Last Thing He Told Me) similarly scheming Tracy Flick in the cult 1999 black comedy Election, it’s not entirely coincidental.

“Definitely,” Rice confirms with a laugh. “I love Election, and Tracy Flick is such a strong and sharp character, and she was definitely an inspiration for Honor. I think Honor is cooler than Tracy Flick. But we were talking about costumes, thinking Tracy Flick but slightly edgier. That character was so pivotal and unique and interesting when the film came out.”

As much as she’s loved her high school movie, Rice says she’s getting to the stage of her career where she’s ready to move on to more mature roles. As the edgy teen Siobhan in Mare Of Easton, she not only got to work alongside Oscar-winner Winslet, as her mother, and resurgent veteran Jean Smart, as her grandmother, she also had the opportunity to explore darker and more dramatic fare as the three generations of women dealt with death, grief and trauma.

“I definitely think that there are other scripts out there, and movies out there, about young people that aren’t set in high school or college,” she says.

“This kind of coming-of-age to post high school is really interesting to me also because that’s where I am in my life at the moment. So, I think there’s a wealth of stories there and I’m definitely eager to jump into that.”

Angourie Rice and Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown. Picture: Supplied

Rice says she looks back on her time filming Mare Of Easttown very fondly and is hugely proud of its critical and commercial success, which earned it 16 Emmy nominations and an Outstanding Lead Actress win for Winslet.

“I am so grateful to everyone on that team for making that show possible because there were lots of moving parts, and it’s a big show and heavy themes, and many characters, and very in depth, and we filmed a lot on location,” Rice says.

Winslet has said she’d “love to play Mare again” if the story is right, and while a second season has yet to be confirmed, Rice says she’d be on board in a heartbeat.

“I mean, yeah,” she says, enthusiastically. “I’m not the person making those decisions but I do have a lot of love for that story and for Siobhan as a character.”

In the meantime, Rice also has her side hustle podcast The Community Library, which she started when she finished high school to celebrate her passion for reading and filled the nerd-shaped hole left when her studies ended.

“I missed writing essays, I missed having assignments to read a book and to write something about it,” she says. “That’s what it started out as, and now it’s a creative project that I love very much and am proud of because it’s wholly mine and I am able to share my love of reading and connect with people online who read the same things and have different opinions or similar opinions.”

Honor Society streams on Paramount+ from July 29. Mare Of Easttown is streaming now on Binge.

Originally published as Grounded young Aussie star Angourie Rice pulled off right work-life balance