How could they have turned down this belle?
Kristen Bell had a rough start in the acting business.
“I would get feedback from an audition like, ‘Well you’re not pretty enough to play like, the pretty girl, but you’re not, like, quirky enough or weird enough to play the weird girl,'” Bell, 39, recalled, breaking down her career timeline with Vanity Fair in a video published Wednesday.
“And I was like, ‘OK, does that just mean I can’t be an actor? Like, what does that mean?” That was what I was getting feedback on on every single audition.”
Bell has since been a leading lady in plenty of projects, from “Veronica Mars” and the heartbreaker in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” to “Frozen” and “The Good Place.”
She went on to talk about the fact that she actually was pretty “quirky” and “weird” growing up and got to channel that into her “Frozen” character, Anna.
“Because I was involved since its inception … I think that I was really able to shape that role into a love letter to my 11-year-old self,” she said. “Most ‘princesses’ that you see on screen or at least the ones that I did when I was 11, they weren’t nearly as clumsy as I was. They didn’t talk too much, they didn’t wear their heart on their sleeve as much as I did. And they just weren’t as weird or quirky and I really wanted to represent all the little weirdos out there.”
Thankfully, Bell said the boxes she used to not fit in have “changed and they have almost gone away” as she’s gotten older.
“It’s like this huge gray area now of all these beautiful stories that you can tell that have dimensional people that don’t have to be one thing,” she said. “I’m really grateful for that. I think it opens up a lot of opportunities for everyone to play and pretend, which is the most fun part.”
