Eliza Scanlen wasn’t technically a child when she became a star. The Australian actor had just turned 18 when she landed her breakout role as Amy Adams’ feral baby-doll sister in HBO’s hit series Sharp Objects – but looking back now, she knows she could’ve done with a few more years under her belt.
“It all happened when I was quite young,” Scanlen says today, still only 26. “I wasn’t really prepared for that kind of attention and when something like that happens, once you get a break, there is this pressure to take advantage of that momentum and run with it. I found it very overwhelming and in some ways, I withdrew – whereas if I was a bit older, I’d have been more confident and ready.” You get the sense that even now, with tentpoles like Little Women, M Night Shyamalan’s Old, and now BBC’s sure-fire hit Dope Girls, to her name, Scanlen is not particularly suited to the discomforts of fame.
