Anna Kendrick Made $75 a Day on Her First Movie, ‘Camp’
Anna Kendrick’s very first movie was in 2003’s Camp, when she was a teenager. She later received an Oscar nomination for her role as Natalie Keener in the 2009 film, Up in the Air.
The actor then became a household name with the Pitch Perfect series of musical movies and had a hit song from the movie “Cups (When I’m Gone).”
She followed up with films such as Up in the Air, Into the Woods, and The Accountant. Her most recent is the psychological thriller Alice, Darling.
In Camp, Kendrick plays Fritzi, a nerdy theater kid who attends the fictional summer theater Camp Ovation, where she finds her talent and her strength before the summer is over.
Anna Kendrick talks about her first movie, ‘Camp’
“What is my voice even?” was Kendrick’s reaction to herself when Vanity Fair played a clip from the film for her. “I think I’m 16 or 17 here. This is horrifying. Let’s continue,” she said as she kept watching.
“This is my first movie. This is a non-union film. I think I got paid $75 a day and only on the days that I was acting.”
The Pitch Perfect star went on to say that everyone from the film actually stayed at the camp where they were filming, with no cell service or Wi-Fi. “It wasn’t the glamorous money-making prospect that I hoped my first movie would be,” she told the outlet.
While watching herself sing, she admitted that her voice sounded nice.
Why Anna Kendrick loved ‘Camp’
Camp was not only Kendrick’s first movie, but many of the other young actors had also never been in a film before. This made the cast incredibly close. One of her fellow actors in Camp was Robin de Jesus, who went on to star in 2021’s tick, tick…Boom!
“At the time, I mean, you couldn’t tell me that these people were not my family and that we were not bonded for life. Like, this was the most significant experience I had ever had,” the Into the Woods star explained.
When the film wrapped, it was hard for Kendrick to leave her castmates. “When I left, I was sobbing,” Kendrick recalled. “It was like a breakup. I cut my hair. I did all the breakup stuff. I was inconsolable.”
As time goes on and she has done more movies and gained more experience, goodbyes after wrapping are no longer as hard for the actor.
‘Camp’ became a cult classic
Kendrick watched herself perform the Steven Sondheim song “Ladies Who Lunch” from the musical Company. “I’m supposed to be dressed up as a middle-aged woman in this scene. And I still look like I’m 12 years old,” she exclaimed.
That is why Camp has a cult following. The young campers were performing age-inappropriate material during their stage productions. It is not often you see young teens perform a song meant for a disillusioned middle-aged woman in Manhattan.
Fans also love that the film grapples with complicated issues, such as sexual identity, self-respect, and parental pressure.
