There’s a lot to be said about the person you were in high school. Often, the popular kids peak, the studious burn out or forge tech careers, and the students who slip under the radar re-emerge on your social feed with a rebrand and a holiday house on Lake Como.
For Angourie Rice, the schoolyard served as an important training ground for life in Hollywood. “I had a paralleled high school experience,” says Rice, who was 15 when she starred alongside Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys. “I first started working in America when I was in high school. So, I had two kinds of adolescence: one normal high school experience and the other on set. I never liked being away from home and from all my friends, but it formed so much of who I am now.”
While her classmates prepared for exams, Rice was busy finding her feet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where she was taken under the wing of Hollywood cool kids Zendaya and Tom Holland. “Shooting Spider-Man was otherworldly,” she says. “I was the youngest, which was fun, because I was looking up to [Zendaya and Tom] and thinking, ‘Wow these kids are so cool.’”
Since then, Rice has graduated to seasoned pro, starring in a slew of films and shows alongside Kate Winslet and Kirsten Dunst. Her latest role, in Honor Society, finds Rice back in high school as a senior with her sights set on Harvard, an experience the star relates to. “I was a very driven student. I wanted to do well and I put a lot of pressure on myself,” says the Melbourne resident. “I really related the overwhelming sense of pressure of figuring out what you’re going to do once you leave school and to do really well and succeed in all of your classes. That was the thing that really drew me in because I was that person in high school.”
Always the dedicated student, Rice’s research for her latest role included familiarising herself with the school-film classics: Clueless, Heathers and Election. “The director sent me a list of movies to study. Clueless was a big comparison that we drew from and one of my favourite movies of all time, so I didn’t have to re-watch that because I’ve seen it so many times. But I re-watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Election.” As for her next chapter? “Hopefully a period drama. I’m super interested in fashion and women throughout history. I love immersing myself in old letters and reading diary entries.”
Honor Society is streaming on Paramount+ from July 30.
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