Hailee Steinfeld

• 1. Introduction

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  Hailee Steinfeld once ran a swear jar on a film set. During the making of True Grit, the harshest word cost its speaker five dollars, and other vulgarities cost a dollar each. Steinfeld fined herself fifty cents whenever she said the word "like." She says she matched the total with her own money and gave every cent to an Alzheimer's foundation.

  That small piece of bookkeeping hints at the person behind the résumé. Steinfeld is an American actress and singer, born in 1996, who has moved back and forth between film sets and recording studios for most of her career. How did a girl from Tarzana become a name that studios and record labels both wanted? Why did so many projects announced with her attached never reach an audience? And how does one performer end up as a Marvel archer, an animated Spider-Gwen, the poet Emily Dickinson and a platinum-selling pop artist?

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• 2. Tarzana Beginnings

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  Hailee Steinfeld was born on the 11th of December 1996 in Tarzana, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. She was the younger of two children. Her mother, Cheri, worked as an interior designer, and her father, Peter Steinfeld, was a personal trainer. Her older brother is named Griffin.

  Fame already ran in the wider family. Her paternal uncle is the fitness trainer and actor Jake Steinfeld, and her maternal granduncle is the former child actor Larry Domasin. A television commercial starring her maternal cousin, the actress True O'Brien, is what pushed Steinfeld toward acting. She was eight years old when she saw it.

  She grew up in Agoura Hills and later in Thousand Oaks, attending Ascension Lutheran School, Conejo Elementary and Colina Middle School. From 2008 she was home-schooled, and she graduated from high school in June 2015. Her father is Jewish and her mother is Christian, and Steinfeld says she "celebrates it all."

  Her maternal grandfather, Ricardo Domasin, had Filipino heritage from Panglao, Bohol, as well as African American heritage. Years later, that ancestry would be echoed in a film role she took in Mississippi-set horror.

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• 3. Mattie Ross

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  At age ten, Steinfeld began acting in short films. One of them, the award-winning She's a Fox, gave her the part of Talia Alden. Three years later, at 13, she was chosen to play Mattie Ross in the western True Grit, and everything changed.

  The film reached international audiences in December 2010. Richard Corliss of Time magazine placed her performance among the top ten of the year. He wrote that she "delivers the orotund dialogue as if it were the easiest vernacular, stares down bad guys, wins hearts. That's a true gift." Roger Ebert, the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone also reviewed her warmly.

  The awards season followed. At the 83rd Academy Awards, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, though the prize went to Melissa Leo. That nomination made her one of the youngest actresses ever nominated in the category. The same performance brought nominations for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a SAG Award and a Critics' Choice Movie Award.

  Fashion noticed too. In May 2011, five months after the film's release, the Italian designer brand Miu Miu named her its new face. Hollywood, meanwhile, was already lining up what she would do next.

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• 4. Roles Taken And Lost

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  In 2011, at age 14, Steinfeld was cast as Juliet in an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The part had originally been meant for a 22-year-old, and there was concern about nudity. The director said the script was changed to suit her age. When the film came out in October 2013, reviews in the United States and abroad were poor.

  Her science-fiction work fared better in visibility. Ender's Game, based on Orson Scott Card's book, reached cinemas on the 1st of November 2013, with Steinfeld as Petra Arkanian. In the romance-drama Begin Again she played Violet. It opened in limited release on the 27th of June 2014 and grossed $134,064 on its opening weekend. A wide release came on the 11th of July, and The Weinstein Company re-released it on the 29th of August.

  In spring 2014, she lent her voice to Anne Frank for an exhibition at the Museum of Tolerance. Ten Thousand Saints, with Ender's Game co-star Asa Butterfield, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on the 23rd of January 2015. Steinfeld played Eliza. She also appeared in the English-language dub of the Japanese animated film When Marnie Was There, playing Anna Sasaki opposite Kiernan Shipka as Marnie. Barely Lethal, directed by Kyle Newman, reached limited release on the 29th of May 2015.

  Many announced roles never materialized. Paramount Pictures closed a 2011 deal for the rights to Cat Patrick's novel Forgotten, with Steinfeld set as London Lane. She was announced for Why We Broke Up as Min Green. As of 2022 it had not gone into production. She was replaced by Emma Roberts in the 2015 film For the Dogs.

  The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, in which she was cast as Hadley, finally reached screens in 2023 with Haley Lu Richardson starring. In January 2015 she was announced as the star of Carrie Pilby, but left because of scheduling conflicts. Break My Heart 1000 Times, with Scott Speer set to direct, had also not been made as of 2022.

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• 5. Signing With Republic

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  Pitch Perfect 2 put Steinfeld beside Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson, under the direction of Elizabeth Banks. Her performance of "Flashlight" in the film earned her recognition as a singer. Around then, she played some of her own songs for a representative of Republic Records at an event in New York City. The label signed her, and in May 2015 it announced the deal and said her first release was in progress.

  On the 17th of May 2015, the music video for Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood," featuring Kendrick Lamar, premiered at the Billboard Music Awards. Steinfeld starred in it as the Trinity. The video later won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.

  Her own work began in July 2015 with an acoustic version of Shawn Mendes' "Stitches," recorded with him. A month later came her debut single, "Love Myself." Its empowering message and suggestive lyrics drew media attention. It debuted at number 27 on the Billboard Pop Songs chart and peaked at 15. No solo female artist had debuted higher on that chart in 17 years, since Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" in 1998.

  The extended play Haiz arrived in November 2015, named with a nickname coined by her fans. Mattman & Robin produced it, and Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter helped write it. Reviews were generally positive. In February 2016 she released a remix of "Rock Bottom" featuring the funk pop band DNCE.

  "Starving" followed in July 2016, a collaboration with Grey featuring Zedd. It became her biggest hit to date. It went platinum in Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, double platinum in Australia and triple platinum in Canada.

  In April 2017, she released "Most Girls," which peaked at number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100. She sang it live for the first time at the Radio Disney Music Awards on the 29th of April. Its video was praised for celebrating individuality, and the song earned her the 2017 Billboard Music Award for Top Covered Artist. "Let Me Go," made with Alesso, Florida Georgia Line and Andrew Watt, reached number 14 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart that September.

  On the 12th of January 2018, she released "Capital Letters" for the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack, and it peaked at number 12 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. She told fans in March 2018 that she was wrapping up her debut studio album. Meghan Trainor in 2016, then Katy Perry and Charlie Puth in 2018, took her on tour as an opening act. That November, she hosted and performed at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Bilbao, Spain.

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• 6. Heroes And Poets

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  In September 2016, Steinfeld took the lead in The Edge of Seventeen, a coming-of-age comedy written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig. She played Nadine Franklin, with Blake Jenner, Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick in the cast. It opened on the 18th of November 2016 to positive reviews. Her performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. In 2017 she returned as Emily Junk in Pitch Perfect 3.

  Late 2018 brought two very different parts. She starred as Charlie Watson in Bumblebee, a Transformers spin-off. She also voiced Spider-Gwen in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won an Academy Award. She returned to the role in Across the Spider-Verse in 2023.

  At the end of 2018, she was cast as Emily Dickinson in the Apple TV+ period comedy Dickinson. The series premiered on the 1st of November 2019 and ran for three seasons, with Steinfeld as a main cast member in 30 episodes. She also served as an executive producer. In 2020 the show won a Peabody Award, the first Apple TV+ show to receive that honor. To promote it, she released the song "Afterlife," which appeared in the first-season finale.

  In November 2021 she voiced Vi, short for Violet, in the animated series Arcane, which is set in the League of Legends universe. It ran for 16 episodes, and a second season premiered on the 9th of November 2024. Later that month in 2021, on the 24th, Hawkeye premiered on Disney+. She starred as Kate Bishop in six episodes, to positive reviews, and says she signed a multi-project deal.

  Bishop returned in a cameo in The Marvels (2023). Steinfeld voiced alternate versions of the character in the animated series What If...? at the end of 2024 and in Marvel Zombies in September 2025.

  In April 2025, she appeared in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, alongside Michael B. Jordan and Wunmi Mosaku. She played Mary, a mixed-race woman in 1932 Mississippi under Jim Crow, whose ancestry mirrored her own African American heritage.

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• 7. Music In Her Words

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  Steinfeld released two singles in 2020, "Wrong Direction" and "I Love You's." They led into the extended play Half Written Story, which came out on the 8th of May 2020. Critics praised her vocals, confidence and vulnerability, but panned the music itself. On the 28th of May 2020 she also released "Masterpiece" with the Taiwanese singer Chen Linong.

  Two years passed without new music. In April 2022 she teased a song called "Coast," and it arrived on the 28th of July, a euphoric guitar-and-percussion single featuring the rapper Anderson .Paak. Its music video premiered on Facebook on the 9th of November 2022, and an acoustic version followed on the 7th of December. In March 2023 she released "SunKissing," which Rolling Stone called a "vibey, electric guitar-backed pop earworm." After another break from recording, she contributed the song "Dangerous" to the Sinners soundtrack.

  Steinfeld has been clear about what music gives her. In a 2016 interview she said, "With my music, I feel like I get to be myself, tell my own story, and take my life experiences and not put them into another story but into my own words." She also said that music is a big influence in her acting and that the two "entwine." On studios, she said: "You go into a room with people that you love and you feel comfortable with, and can be yourself around."

  Critics have noticed the themes. Variety writer Natalie Weiner said Steinfeld has long injected "some vague notion of female empowerment" into her music, and self-love recurs in her songs. V magazine writer Dylan Kelly called her an "artist of ambidexterity." Steinfeld herself hopes to be remembered as "an artist that truly cared about the art."

  Her musical heroes are Madonna and Rihanna, whom she admires for their strength and courage in expressing themselves. She also names Britney Spears, Tori Kelly, Selena Gomez, Bruno Mars and Justin Timberlake. Her mother's love of Boyz II Men and Luther Vandross shaped what she heard growing up.

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• 8. Beyond The Screen

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  Steinfeld's name has also sold products. She has endorsed Prada, Balmain and Louis Vuitton. In 2017 she began representing Reef Footwear and MISSION Activewear, and in 2018 her eyewear line, Privé Revaux, launched. In 2022 she became a brand ambassador for CORE Hydration and its "Find Your Core" campaign.

  Her charity work leans toward children. She has supported "What's Your Mission?", "No Kid Hungry," the WE Movement, the Ryan Seacrest Foundation and Make-A-Wish. She appeared at the Breast Cancer Foundation's 2014 Hot Pink Party, the 2015 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball tour and We Day 2019 in California. In 2016 she joined other singers and celebrities in recording "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," which raised money for New York City's homeless through the poverty-fighting organization Robin Hood.

  In August 2020, the Pitch Perfect cast reunited for an a cappella cover of Beyonce's "Love On Top." Proceeds went to UNICEF to help children in Lebanon and around the world. In 2024 she launched a newsletter called Beau Society, meant to connect with her audience on a deeper level.

  Her personal life has recently drawn the most attention. Steinfeld began dating Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen in May 2023, and they made the relationship public in July 2024. Allen proposed on the 22nd of November 2024, and the engagement was announced a week later. They married in California on the 31st of May 2025. In December 2025 they announced a pregnancy, and on the 2nd of April 2026 Steinfeld announced the birth of their daughter.

  The work ahead is crowded. She voices Billie in the animated film Hexed in 2026, and she is set to return as Spider-Gwen in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse in 2027. In July 2025 it was reported that she would also star opposite Miles Teller in Paramount's Winter Games.

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