Tomorrow's girl: Quvenzhané Wallis

The first time I meet 11-year-old actress Quvenzhané Wallis it’s 9am on a cold morning in Jersey City, New Jersey, and she’s sleepwalking. Propped up by her mother and manager Qulyndreia, she extends a limp hand, but her eyes remain firmly closed. She takes my bag, fashions it into a makeshift pillow and falls fast asleep with her Barbie-pink sweatshirt hood pulled down over her eyes. ‘Quvenzhané is not a morning person,’ confirms her mother. Her daughter’s eyes stay closed even as she is fed a bagel with cream cheese and bacon. The interview, it’s agreed, should probably happen later.

Wallis, who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, is in town to promote Annie, the all-singing, all-dancing remake (complete with a soundtrack by hipster-songwriter Sia) of the musical that first opened on Broadway in 1977 and has been performed all over the world, as well as being made into a much-loved film in 1982. But it’s the original musical, with its classic numbers ‘It’s the Hard Knock Life’ and ‘Tomorrow’, from which Will Gluck, the director, writer and co-producer of the new Annie (and the man behind the 2011 Justin Timberlake film Friends with Benefits), took his inspiration.

The plot draws heavily on Oliver Twist: little orphan escapes the clutches of alcoholic foster mother Mrs Hannigan (Cameron Diaz in the new film), falls in with a billionaire, Will Stacks (played by Jamie Foxx), antics ensue, Annie is kidnapped but eventually she gets adopted. Gluck came to the project with Jay-Z and Will Smith (whose daughter Willow was briefly attached to the title role) already onboard as producers and wrote the screenplay specifically for Wallis. ‘One of the most amazing things about Quvenzhané is her face,’ he says. ‘It’s just so expressive — she can show so many emotions without saying a word. When I was writing Annie, I kept that in mind. She’s an Oscar-nominated actress one minute, but she’s a child the next: that enthusiasm and excitement is 100 per cent real.’

At the age of nine, Wallis was the youngest-ever Best Actress Oscar nominee, for her role in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. The dystopian film won many awards, including the Camera d’Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at Sundance, and was also nominated for three further Oscars, including Best Director for Benh Zeitlin. At its heart was Wallis, as a wide-eyed sprite called Hushpuppy. She was just six years old at the time of filming, but delivered a firecracker performance, channelling the resilience and hope of her small, secluded community living off the land in the bayous of rural Louisiana. She listened for heartbeats in crabs, stopped monsters in their tracks with a scowl, and burped on demand — something that, in case I was wondering, she says, ‘I don’t really do any more.’

Wallis was only five when she auditioned for Beasts. ‘My mom asked me if I wanted to go do auditions and I said yes. If I would have said no, you probably wouldn’t even know me; you probably wouldn’t be speaking to me and I probably wouldn’t be in New York. So I’m so glad that I said yes,’ she says in a mildly precocious manner that smacks of media training. How did her life change after the film’s success? She adopts a dramatic, authoritative voice: ‘So, after Beasts…’ she trails off... ‘I really don’t remember. We went to Utah, we went pretty much everywhere...’ She whispers to her mother. ‘Mommy! What movie did I do after Beasts? 12 Years a Slave?’ Indeed: Wallis had a small role as Margaret Northup, the daughter of the protagonist Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Working with big-name stars has never fazed Wallis. ‘If you tell Quvenzhané that she’s going to get to act with an Oscar-winning actor like Jamie Foxx, and that he’s got grilled cheese, she’s going to be excited about the grilled cheese,’ says Gluck. Wallis remembers the three-month Annie shoot, entirely on location in New York City (including a scene in the brand-new Freedom Tower, which had not yet opened at the time), as one big sleepover: ‘Cameron [Diaz] was like a mother to me.’

It’s later in the day and I have met up with Wallis again. She has just finished her schooling for the day (when she travels, tutors are hired locally) and is running around a huge suite at The Carlyle hotel, which has a fireplace and a grand piano and at least three bedrooms. Wallis is wearing blue jogging bottoms and a green sequined T-shirt. Distractions abound: toys lie scattered and she’s messing around with a balloon — blowing it up, then releasing the air and giggling wildly. I mute the giant TV, but her dog, a Yorkie-poodle cross called Sammie, is still roaming about. Her face goes from beaming smile to feigned concentration as she settles down to talk. At times her media training slips, revealing an 11-year-old girl who seems to be both entirely in control of her image and, well, just an 11-year-old girl.

I ask if she ever gets tired of all the travelling, the fancy hotels, the interviews and photo shoots. She looks at me, surprised. ‘Oh, yesss,’ she says. ‘Sometimes, but as you can see, I’m pretty over [being tired now]… I like everything I have. And I’m not going to be that snob that’s like [she adopts an affected starlet voice], “I hate everything, like, everything.” I’m like, “This is cool.” I’d like to have this all the time but, you know, that’s not going to happen all the time.’ I can’t help but hope she means it and that she’ll graduate graciously from child star to adult actor in the Natalie Portman vein, as opposed to, say, Lindsay Lohan-style.

I wonder if she knew immediately after Beasts that she wanted to be an actress. ‘Yes,’ she says convincingly, before adding: ‘I like changing into a whole other character — sometimes it might be me, or sometimes it’s a whole different person, but a good person, not a bad person. I feel like this is a really important gift that God gave me for a special reason, and I’m glad that he gave it to me and I can’t wait to see what the special reason is.’

In spite of performing several musical numbers in Annie, Wallis claims she’s not really a singer: ‘I’ve only sung in the back of the car before.’ Foxx says of his co-star: ‘Our director would shout new lines to Quvenzhané and she would be able to shoot them right back with ease. That’s difficult to do as an adult actor, let alone as an 11-year-old.’ (About her name: ‘Quven’ combines syllables from her mother’s name and her father’s, Venjie, while ‘zhané’ is Swahili for ‘fairy’.)