Amanda Seyfried Once Felt That ‘Mamma Mia’ Was Way Better for Her Career Than ‘Mean Girls’
Actor Amanda Seyfried credited Mean Girls for giving her career a boost. But Mamma Mia was the movie she felt truly made her a star.
How ‘Mamma Mia’ helped Amanda Seyfried’s film career more than ‘Mean Girls’
Seyfried felt she enjoyed some nice exposure for Mean Girls. But she didn’t believe her presence was truly felt in the film industry until she did Mamma Mia. The feature was a musical that saw Seyfried play Meryl Streep’s daughter, and is one of Seyfried’s biggest blockbuster hits. According to The Numbers, it earned $695.5 million at the box-office.
Given its huge viewership, it perhaps reintroduced Seyfried to a much broader audience than perhaps even Mean Girls could reach. So it’s easy to see why the actor saw Mamma Mia as her true breakthrough role.
“It took me to a drastically different level. Mean Girls took me from nowhere to here, and Mamma Mia took me to the ceiling. Everybody in the business suddenly knew who I was. I had been working a lot but, for many people, I came out of nowhere,” she said.
This resulted in a wider variety of film opportunities for her to choose from.
“It’s a lot more offers, it’s magazine covers and you end up on the short list of actresses who are sought for certain roles. All that good, fun, new stuff,” she said.
Amanda Seyfried gave her ‘Mamma Mia’ audition everything she had
Seyfried faced a lot of competition for the highly coveted Mamma Mia role. Still, the actor felt she’d make the perfect fit for the part because it combined both of her passions. Apart from acting, Seyfried was also an avid singer.
“But I also knew that so many young actresses would also be great in that role, so I knew it was going to be really tough,” she once told Cinema. “But growing up singing it was always something that I thought I’d pursue. Then acting took over and I love my job. But Mamma Mia! Was the perfect marriage of both.”
To clinch the part, Seyfried confided that she gave everything that she had. Her final audition came when she had to win over the film’s director, Phyllida Lloyd, personally. But for a second Seyfried didn’t feel that her everything was good enough for the movie.
“I had one last audition with Phyllida and that was really fun because I got to do the scene with her but she was so quiet and shy,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘this woman does not like me!’ Then we talked after the audition and it was great. When I got in my car I cried because that was the best I could ever do. I’d never felt that I’d done the best I could ever do before that audition so it was pretty emotional. And then they told me that I had the part and I was just overjoyed.”
Amanda Seyfried felt Meryl Streep made her a better actor
Another bonus for working on Mamma Mia! was the opportunity to work alongside Streep. Seyfriend couldn’t help gush about collaborating with the veteran, and how doing so shaped her performance.
“Meryl takes you into a zone, in which you have no choice but to experience along with her what it is that makes her the actor that she is,” Seyfried said. “It’s incredible. It’s intimidating because, obviously, I was shocked that I got the role and freaked out a little, too. But then I decided that the best way to deal with this whole fear of her was just to be myself and then when I met her it was obvious that she is amazing and she’s human and she respected me immediately and I couldn’t have asked for anything more from her. I feel that she brought my acting up closer to her level than it ever will be with anybody else and then, hopefully, one day I can actually be that good, on my own.”
