What do Nicole Kidman, Ryan Gosling and Miley Cyrus have in common? They’ve all worked with Melbourne teen star Angourie Rice
What do Nicole Kidman, Ryan Gosling and Miley Cyrus have in common? They’ve all worked with Melbourne teen Angourie Rice. And with a foot in the door with Marvel she’s ready to cement herself as one to watch.
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What do you remember about Year 12? Pressure to do well, uncertainty about what comes next. Try adding a Marvel blockbuster, a cult Netflix series, a hit Australian movie and the AACTA Awards into the mix.
That was the schedule facing Melbourne teenager and budding Hollywood star Angourie Rice during her VCE last year.
“It was crazy,” she laughs. “I’m glad it’s done now and I don’t have to go back.”
With four months spent swinging across Europe filming Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the exam period spent in South Africa shooting an episode of Black Mirror alongside Miley Cyrus, Rice skipped her VCE exams.
Her final results took the form of a derived score that takes into account marks from across the year, and she was “very happy” with how she went.
“I put my mental health first, which is the most important thing. And I’m glad I did that, because I would have been way too stressed,” she says.
“I’m someone who pushes myself a lot and there was definitely a point where my mum was like, ‘You just have to let it go, ’cos you can’t do everything all the time’. She’s right.”
Between Spider-Man and Black Mirror, Rice had one week at home.
“Just enough time to attend my graduation, which was nice.”
She landed home again a day before the AACTAs, where she won Best Actress for Ladies in Black.
Exhausted, she promptly vowed: “That’s it, I’m not doing anything for three months.”
That, more or less, is where we find Rice now — 18, free of schooling (she has deferred a place at University of Melbourne) and focused solely on her career.
“It’s kind of scary,” she admits.
“For so long in my life I’ve had two things I’m focusing on — school and work. Now it’s just work. So I’m frantically trying to build projects for myself.”
She has been auditioning and, back in La La Land this week for the Spider-Man premiere, is once again putting herself in front of all the right people.
Ryan Corr, who shares the same management as Rice and starred with her in Ladies in Black, has no doubt his fellow Melburnian is bound for great things.
“She’s one of the most exciting things to come out of this country in a number of years,” Corr says.
“She’s an incredibly well-read, intellectual young woman and she’s really going to go places.”
Rice attended primary school in Perth, where her father Jeremy was director of a youth theatre company and mother Kate wrote plays.
By six, she was appearing in her first commercials and short films. She played the lead in director Zak Hilditch’s 2011 short Transmission, about a girl searching for her father and a 20-something man seeking redemption before the world ends, and again when it was extended into a feature, These Final Hours.
Her film career was officially in motion.
After a year living in Munich, Germany, the family settled in inner-city Melbourne.
Rice was in Year 8 when she landed her first Hollywood gig, starring with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys.
So began a heady few years of mixing secondary schooling, work and international travel, with Rice usually chaperoned by her mother.
In Year 10, she shot Jasper Jones in WA, Spider-Man: Homecoming in Atlanta and Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled in Louisiana. Year 11 brought teen romance Every Day in Toronto and Ladies in Black in Sydney.
Now Rice has come of age, mum is no longer required on set, but perhaps is still wanted.
“I’m definitely moving into a new phase of my life, but it’s nice to have someone there to support you,” Rice says.
“It’s tough if you’ve just worked a full 12-hour day, you come home and you’re exhausted, you don’t want to make dinner and wash your clothes … but part of being an adult is having to do that, so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up.”
Kate is now “moving more into film and television writing and getting projects off the ground,” her daughter explains, while Jeremy is head of education and families at the Melbourne Theatre Company. Younger sister Kalliope, 15, no longer acts, but shares her sister’s love of all things Harry Potter.
When she won the role of Betty Brant in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, Rice hadn’t seen many of the Marvel superhero movies.
As her friends went into OMG overdrive, she played it down: “It’s just a small role, don’t freak out.”
Not only does Betty play a bigger part in the action of Far From Home, but having seen Avengers: Endgame, Rice now has more of a sense of the enormous cinematic universe she is part of.
“I went with a friend and afterwards I was like, ‘I don’t know how to put into words how strange it feels to see such an epic film like Endgame, where you have 20 superheroes battling it out and you know it’s the biggest film of this franchise, and then in the next one … I’m a part of that universe’. I can’t figure out how to compartmentalise my thoughts to make it coherent, what I’m feeling.”
After rising from the ashes in Endgame, Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) ditches the superhero stuff for a school excursion to Europe in Far From Home. But trouble follows, so Spidey has to step up and save the day.
“It’s like Homecoming times 10,” raves Rice. “It’s gonna be epic. You’ve got all the action but you’ve also got teenagers hanging out on a school trip which is really fun — a lot of people can relate to that.”
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Rice can’t say much more, like whether or not Betty and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are going steady. At least the Marvel cone of silence doesn’t extend to the team she worked with.
Like Rice, former Disney star Zendaya, Holland (who played Billy Elliot on the West End aged 12) and Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel) all grew up in the biz. “It’s great that we’re all around the same age, and we’ve had similar-ish experiences of working in the industry while we’re growing up,” she says.
She has a lot of respect for Holland, 23, who carries the enormous weight of being Spider-Man with an endearing lightness.
“Tom is a fantastic performer and super down to earth. He’s genuinely so kind and caring. It’s amazing what he does with the platform he has and how much he’s doing at such a young age.”
The shoot took them to Prague, London and Venice. As much as she loved the latter (“You can’t get anywhere unless you walk or have a boat, it’s incredible”), Rice’s favourite location was the production’s home base, Leavesden Studios, outside London. Why? Because it’s where the Harry Potter movies were made.
“Oh my God,” she exclaims. “It was so funny because when they said we were going to be filming in London, I said to my sister, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we filmed at the Harry Potter studios?’ When it came through that we were, I was so, so excited.
“The best part about going to work in the morning was driving into the studios and seeing the Harry Potter posters, and they still had sets up from Fantastic Beasts. Even seeing a little glimpse of it in the distance was so cool.”
A portion of the Leavesden complex has now been turned into a Potter studio tour, where Rice and Kalliope were in heaven looking at all the props, costumes and sets.
Such is Rice’s fandom, she dreams of one day voicing Hermione in an audiobook of J.K. Rowling’s novels. She’s contenting herself — and occupying time between jobs — by talking about her favourite books in her new podcast, The Community Library.
“I’ve always loved books and when school finished I was like, well how am I gonna talk about books now?”
In the latest episode, she tackles Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; in the next it will be A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.
“It’s niche, but I don’t want it to be niche,” Rice says.
“A lot of people are turned off reading because they’re not good at it at school or it’s stressful. But for me, talking about what I read is how I connect with people. So I’m trying
to choose a mix of things that lots of people will enjoy.”
Rice has been thinking a lot about fan culture lately, too. Her Black Mirror episode — titled Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too — is about a lonely schoolgirl obsessed with a pink-haired pop star, played by Cyrus.
“I’ve been a fan and I’ve also been on the receiving end of it or witnessed it happening to other people I know. So I have this odd perspective on it.”
In the episode, pop star Ashley O fills a void for Rice’s character — she’s the friend, sister and mother Rachel doesn’t have. Rice’s earnest refrain of “I’m such a big fan” at inopportune moments is deadpan hilarious.
Three weeks after filming on the episode wrapped, Cyrus married Aussie actor Liam Hemsworth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she and Rice connected by talking about Australia.
“I told her I’m named after a beach (Angourie Point) that’s around Yamba and she was talking about how she hangs out at Byron all the time.”
Rice voted for the first time in last month’s election. “I love that we’re actually forced to vote, because it forces me and all my friends who have turned 18 to actually consider what our values are and what we stand for and what we want to see happen.”
Many of her friends are going into creative fields, but others are studying to be paramedics and nurses.
If she does go to university, she’ll study literature. Acting allows her to combine this passion with her interest in issues such as the environment, because, as she says, “I’ve always loved telling stories and I like putting ideas out into the world”.
She sees herself producing one day, as a means to take control of how females are depicted on screen.
“Something I’ve struggled to come to terms with is the fact that if a script comes through that is not great for girls — there’s just this one role for a girl that is one-dimensional — I can reject that, but it’ll still get made.
“So my way of thinking here is, OK, if I become a producer, I can choose what gets made.”
Would she speak up now on a film set if she was unhappy with the direction something was taking?
“I would like to think yes,” she replies, “but at the same time I get scared a lot of the time and lose confidence in myself and feel not strong enough and not able to do that.”
Rachael Taylor, another Ladies in Black co-star, thinks Rice is underselling herself.
“Working with Angourie at the age of 16 was a masterclass for me. She is so mature beyond her years and so at ease with what she does, I was looking at her like, ‘Oh, so that’s how you do that!’,” Taylor says.
“She can and will have whatever career she wants to have.”
So is Rice ready to take on more and do bigger?
“Always,” she smiles. “I’ve just got to take it one step at a time, so I don’t get overwhelmed.”
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