Evan Rachel Wood Grows Up

Sony Pictures Classics / Everett Collection The 21-year-old star of Woody Allen’s new film on dating Marilyn Manson, her role in the Broadway musical of Spider-Man, and what she learned from Warren Beatty.

If you are a child actress growing up in America in the 2000s, there are really only two ways to go: the Miley Cyrus/Hillary Duff route, all bubble gum and Disney musicals and spangles, or the more substantial Dakota Fanning/Abigail Breslin path, one of serious acting cred and Oscar nods—a girl who demands to be taken seriously despite, and sometimes because of, her age. Evan Rachel Wood emerged as a solid member of the latter group; even at age 12, she was on television in a plum role—in the 1999 ABC drama Once and Again—she played the anorexic lesbian Jessie Sammler, smudging plenty of eyeliner and delivering dozens of tearful monologues over her 55-episode arc. For three years, Wood matured in front of American audiences, growing from a stick-thin, sinewy blonde into a fierce teenager with defiant eyes.

“I don’t like perfect. It doesn’t exist. I like taking that old Hollywood idea and putting rock and roll on top of it and messing it up and smudging it.”

When Once and Again went off the air in 2002, Wood had to make the young actress’ Sophie’s choice—to move into more typical teenage froth and risk mass-market sameness, or to continue taking edgy roles and pigeonhole oneself that way. Wood decided to take a bigger risk than most actresses ever do: For her next big role, in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen, Wood played a teen who smoked, did drugs, fellated older men, had sex, shoplifted, and bared her midriff in the seediest parts of downtown Los Angeles.

“Once and Again was pretty heavy stuff, but Thirteen was a whole other ballgame,” says Wood, who is sitting at a desk in Sony Pictures’ high-rise Manhattan offices. With big red ringlets, cherry-red lipstick, and a precise swath of black-winged eyeliner, she looks more like a vintage pinup girl than a 21-year-old ingénue. “I actually turned Thirteen down three times because I’m an idiot. I was afraid of it. But when I met the director—she really got it. I was 13, and I’d I never had a conversation like that with an adult who was talking to me like an equal and wanted to know how I felt and how I could express myself. It just changed the way I looked at myself—I thought I was just kind of this powerless thing before.”

Wood’s voice is so calm and self-possessed, it’s disarming. She speaks evenly and openly, with a wide smile—she clearly hasn’t thought of herself as a teenager for some time, but someone older, more capable of weathering situations. “I’d been so upset that girls my age hadn’t had a proper voice yet,” she goes on about Thirteen. “I was just so tired of seeing these high school, fluffy girls. I was tired of seeing the boys and the house parties and stuff. It’s not like that. Not for me.”

Wood does portray a different image of young womanhood than most American actresses—she pushes boundaries constantly in her career and life, often making others uncomfortable in the process. To date, she has played a young girlfriend of an aging cowboy (Down in the Valley), a student accusing her teacher of sexual harassment (Pretty Persuasion), a sexually liberated peace activist (Across the Universe), and the troubled daughter of Mickey Rourke’s bedraggled character in The Wrestler. Almost every chance Wood has taken has paid off—she is a darling of directors and screenwriters in search of a serious, beautiful actress who has the chops to pull off drama and the airy countenance of a comedienne.