Wasikowska was born on 25 October 1989[2] in Canberra, Australia.[3] She attended Cook Primary School, Ainslie Primary School and Canberra High School,[4] and Karabar High School in Queanbeyan, which neighbours Canberra.[5] She has an older sister, Jess, and a younger brother, Kai.[6][7] Her mother, Marzena Wasikowska, is a Polish photographer, while her father, John Reid, is an Australian photographer and collagist.[8][9][10] In 1998, when she was eight years old, Wasikowska and her family moved to Szczecin, Poland for a year, after her mother received a grant to produce a collection of work based on her own experience of emigrating from Poland to Australia in 1974 at the age of 11.[11][12] Wasikowska and her siblings took part in the production as subjects; she explained to Johanna Schneller of The Globe and Mail in July 2010, "We never had to smile or perform. We weren't always conscious of being photographed. We'd just do our thing, and she'd take pictures of us."[13]
At the age of nine, Wasikowska began studying ballet with Jackie Hallahan at the Canberra Dance Development Centre,[14] with hopes of going professional. She began dancing en pointe at thirteen, and was training 35 hours a week in addition to attending school full-time.[15][16] Her daily routine consisted of leaving school in the early afternoon and dancing until nine o'clock at night.[17] A spur on her heel hampered her dancing.[18] Her passion for ballet also waned due to the increasing pressure to achieve physical perfection and her growing dissatisfaction with that world in general, and she quit at the age of fourteen. However, she credits ballet with improving her ability to handle her nerves in auditions.[18]
At the same time, she had been exposed to European and Australian cinema at an early age, and was particularly moved by Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy and Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career.[13] Although shy and averse to performing during her school years,[13][19] she was inspired to try to break into acting after seeing Holly Hunter in The Piano and Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence.[20] She felt acting in film was a way to explore human imperfections.[21] She looked up twelve Australian talent agencies on the Internet and contacted them all, but received only one response. Despite her lack of acting experience, she arranged a meeting after persistent callbacks.[20]
Career
2005–2009: Early work
Wasikowska landed her first acting role in 2004 with a two-episode stint on the Australian soap All Saints. She had just turned 15 when she was cast in her Australian film debut, Suburban Mayhem (2006),[18][22] for which she was nominated for a Young Actor's AFI Award.[5] That year she also appeared in her first short film, Lens Love Story, in which she had no dialogue.
In 2007, Wasikowska appeared in the crocodile horror film Rogue, alongside Radha Mitchell and Sam Worthington. She observed quietly on the set; fellow actor Stephen Curry noted, "We didn't hear a peep out of her for three weeks, which earned her the nickname of 'Rowdy'".[22] She beat nearly 200 other actresses for a part in the drama September (2007) when she was cast on the spot by director Peter Carstairs following her audition.[18] She starred in Spencer Susser's acclaimed short film I Love Sarah Jane, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.[23][24]
At the age of seventeen, Wasikowska received her first big break role in the United States when she was cast as Sophie, a suicidal gymnast, in HBO's acclaimed weekly drama In Treatment; she auditioned for the role by videotape.[25][26] The part required her to leave school in Canberra and move to Los Angeles for three months, while enrolling in correspondence courses.[26] She earned critical acclaim for her performance as the troubled teenager treated by psychotherapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne),[27][28][29] which included praise for her American accent.[30] She revealed in an October 2008 interview with Variety that she was something of a mimic as a child, and that the widely available American films and TV shows in Australia made it easier for Australians to learn to speak like Americans.[31]
This show enabled Wasikowska to gain roles in American films. She played Chaya, the young wife of Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) in Defiance (2008).[32] Director Edward Zwick cast her, explaining to the Australian edition of Vogue, "Her inner life is so vivid that it comes across even when she's being still."[33] Her next role was as aviation pioneer Elinor Smith in Mira Nair's 2009 biopic Amelia.[34] In June 2008, for her work on In Treatment, she received an Australians in Film Breakthrough Award.[35]
Wasikowska played the supporting role of Pamela Choat in the 2009 Southern Gothic independent film That Evening Sun opposite Hal Holbrook. Director Scott Teems, seeking a young actress who bore a resemblance to Sissy Spacek, initially balked at the casting director's suggestion of Wasikowska for the role. He wanted to cast all native Southerners for the sake of authenticity.[36][37] However, after auditions with other actresses were unsuccessful, Teems relented and summoned Wasikowska for as audition. During the two hours she had to prepare, she watched Coal Miner's Daughter online to quickly learn a Southern accent, and impressed Teems enough to be the only non-American actor in the film.[37] She was nominated for a 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female,[38] and the film received a South by Southwest award for Best Ensemble Cast.
2010–2016: Breakthrough and critical acclaim
In July 2008, Wasikowska was cast as the eponymous heroine in Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, alongside Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter.[39] She sent a videotaped audition to casting directors in London, and her first live reading in Los Angeles occurred on the same day as her Evening Sun audition.[36] After three more auditions in London, she was given the role.[40] Burton cited her "old-soul quality" as a catalyst in casting her: "Because you're witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that."[26]
Wasikowska portrayed a nineteen-year-old Alice returning to Wonderland for the first time in over a decade after falling down a rabbit hole from an unwanted marriage proposal. Her affinity for the character played a part in her desire for the role, as she had read the Lewis Carroll books as a child and was a fan of Jan Švankmajer's 1988 stop-motion film Alice.[41] She considered Burton's film as a chance to explore a deeper characterisation of Alice, to whom she felt young women her age could relate, saying: "Alice has a certain discomfort within herself, within society and among her peers; I [...] have definitely felt similarly about all of those things, so I could really understand her not fitting in. Alice also [is] an observer who is thinking a lot, and that's similar to how I am."[40]
On 25 October, Wasikowska was honored with the Hollywood Awards' Breakthrough Actress Award,[45] which was presented to her by Bryce Dallas Howard,[46] and she won the Australian Film Institute International Award for Best Actress on 12 December for her performance in Alice in Wonderland.[47] According to Forbes, Alice in Wonderland was amongst the highest-grossing films of 2010 with $1.025 billion.[48] As of May 2022, it is the 44th-highest-grossing film of all time.
From March to May 2010, Wasikowska filmed Cary Fukunaga's adaptation of Jane Eyre, in which she starred as the title character opposite Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester.[49] She began reading the novel after completion of Alice in Wonderland, during which she asked her agent if a script existed. Two months later, she received a script and was asked to meet with Fukunaga[50] Fukunaga was unfamiliar with her work and was undecided about casting her, so he sought the opinion of director Gus Van Sant, who had worked with Wasikowska on his 2011 film Restless.[51] Fukunga told BlackBook magazine in February 2011, "Gus wrote back: 'Cast her.'"[20] Due to a scheduling conflict, she had to withdraw from the lead in Julia Leigh's 2011 Australian independent film Sleeping Beauty, and she was replaced by Emily Browning.[52][53]
Wasikowska appeared in Restless (2011), which was filmed from November to December 2009. The portrayal of her character, a terminally ill sixteen-year-old, required her to crop her long hair.[54] From December 2010 to February 2011, Wasikowska filmed Rodrigo García's Albert Nobbs, for which she was a last-minute replacement for Amanda Seyfried.[55]
On 21 April 2011, Wasikowska was named in the Time 100, a listing of the world's most influential people, which featured a brief essay written by Albert Nobbs co-star Glenn Close.[56] In June, Wasikowska was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[57] In December, she was among a group of actors who filmed a series of shorts from The New York Times titled Touch of Evil, which honored the art of cinematic villainy.[58]
In 2011, Wasikowska played the small supporting role of Shia LaBeouf's character's love interest in John Hillcoat's Lawless.[59] Later in the year, she filmed the lead in Park Chan-wook's English-language debut, Stoker.[60][61]Lawless premiered at Cannes in May 2012, while Stoker debuted at Sundance in January 2013. Wasikowska also appeared in Miu Miu's spring 2012 fashion campaign.[62] In 2012, she made her second appearance in a Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue, this time being featured on the cover panel.[63]
Wasikowska made her directorial debut on a segment of The Turning, a collection of short stories by Australian author Tim Winton.[69] It premiered in August 2013 at the Melbourne International Film Festival. In July 2013, she began filming David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars in Toronto. The film was released in 2014.[70] She next played the title role in Sophie Barthes' film adaptation of Madame Bovary,[71] which began shooting on 30 September 2014 in Normandy, France.[72]
Wasikowska replaced Emma Stone in Guillermo del Toro's gothic romanceCrimson Peak (2015), where she starred alongside Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. Production commenced in February 2014. The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on 25 September 2015, and was later released in the United States in October. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the production values, performances and direction.[73][74]
In 2016, Wasikowska reprised the role of Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass.[75] Despite receiving generally negative reviews and faring badly at the box office, critics praised its performances and visual effects. This was Wasikowska's last major film studio release before moving on to appear in more independent films.
In her spare time, Wasikowska is an avid photographer,[87] often chronicling her travels and capturing images of her film sets with a Rolleiflex camera.[88] During production of Jane Eyre, she had a secret pocket sewn into one of her costumes to conceal a digital camera that she used between takes.[89] One of her on-set images, of Fukunaga and Jane Eyre co-star Jamie Bell, was selected as a finalist in the 2011 National Photographic Portrait Prize hosted by Australia's National Portrait Gallery on 24 February 2011.[90]
^Reilly, Natalie (January 2009). "Young talent time: Mia Wasikowska". Sunday Life (Australia); reprinted on mia-wasikowska.net. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2010.
^"Artist Profiles"(PDF). Australian National Capital Artists, Inc. September 2001. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 October 2009. Retrieved 12 December 2010.
^"Defiance interview". TrailerAddict. 15 December 2008. Archived from the original on 2 February 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
^Powers, John (February 2009). "Magic Realism". Vogue Australia; reprinted on mia-wasikowska.net. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2010.
^"Amelia interview". TrailerAddict. 15 October 2009. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
^ abNew, Kate (April 2010). "Mia in Wonderland". Harper's Bazaar (Australia); reprinted on mia-wasikowska.net. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
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