Yahoo Movies Meet ‘Barbie’ Breakout Ariana Greenblatt
Name: Ariana Greenblatt
Age: 15
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Born and Raised: Born in New York, she spent a stint in Florida before moving to Los Angeles when acting started to pick up, when she was around 7 years old.
“It was kind of like a very natural accident. I was a dancer at first in Florida, but every time I had a dance I would treat it like the biggest performance of my life. So I’ve always kind of had that bug in me, to perform,” she says. “I came to L.A. for a family vacation and my dad knows a lot of people here, so we were just saying ‘hi’ to his old friends and then I was sent out by my manager at the time for a bunch of meetings and I didn’t know what they were. I just thought I was meeting people, but they were actually auditions for three different roles and I got all three of them in the same week. And that kind of snowballed.”
Big Break: Greenblatt stars in the summer’s most anticipated film “Barbie,” as one of the humans (America Ferrera is her mom in the film). The audition came to her without revealing what the project actually was.
“I didn’t know much about what it would actually be, but I just knew Greta [Gerwig] was involved with it, and that’s the only thing I needed to hear to put my life into the audition,” she says. “I did the first round of normal auditions and then once I realized Margot [Robbie] was Barbie and I started connecting the dots and the announcements were coming out, I’m like, ‘oh my God, this is insanity.’ I fully was just trying to keep my cool and get to know my character really well.”
Growing Up Barbie: “I grew up with the Barbie Dreamhouse. But it’s weird because I didn’t have a lot of Barbies: I had a lot of Monster High dolls, so I put my Monster High dolls inside the Dreamhouse and acted like it was their house,” Greenblatt says. “But I always loved watching the Barbie Dreamhouse show.”
Barbie Bonding: “I got really close with Alexandra Shipp, who was one of the Barbies. I would always go into her trailer while filming and she would give me little tarot card readings. We would eat snacks together and talk about life,” Greenblatt says. “Same with America, who plays my mom. And Margot too, towards the end of filming; she became like an older sister and I would tell her about my boy problems and my school problems and she was just always there to listen and we would gossip about my life and it was great. She was like my little outlet.”
Career Goals: “I think Natalie Portman has had such a great career. She’s been doing it since she was really young as well, and I think she’s navigated it in a beautiful way. And she went to school and she’s really smart and well spoken. So I really like her career. Also Saoirse Ronan, I think she has an incredible career, and she’s also so young still. I think women like that, who have paved the way for themselves and also managed to either prioritize school or prioritize other things too, which is really cool.”
Up Next: “Obviously with this writer’s strike, everything is kind of crazy, but I definitely have a few things still that will be coming out — some I cannot talk about at all. Yeah. But one that has already been announced is ‘Borderlands’ that should be coming out towards the end of the year. But yeah, you’ll see me more. You’ll get tired of me.”
Interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike.
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