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This year marks a decade since Melbourne’s Angourie Rice made her breakthrough in Hollywood with The Nice Guys. She was just 13 at the time of filming, filling her pockets with chocolates from craft services on set and giggling at her on-screen dad Ryan Gosling’s unscripted singing. It’s not surprising she had no idea how that film – now a cult classic – would be received, having not previously been allowed to watch writer/director Shane Black’s “quite adult” films such as Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But even then, she knew what she wanted for herself.
“I hope that acting works out for me,” she said after the film’s release. “I want to play strong roles that have a significant journey … Some of the time the roles that come through are just for ‘the girlfriend’ or ‘the love interest’. That’s not what I’d like to play … I’m really proud to say I hope I play more strong female roles in the future.”
Rice, now 25, winces and covers her hands with her face when I say I’ve been reading interviews from then. But she hardly has anything to cringe at. The young actor was widely celebrated for her performance in that first big US role. While teenage girls are not traditionally afforded much agency in action movies, Rice’s precocious Holly March was in the thick of it, wielding a gun and slyly trading barbs with her co-stars, Gosling and Russell Crowe.
“I just came back from Sunday roast with my friends,” Rice says via a video call from London. “And the server recognised me from The Nice Guys! It’s a movie that has really stuck with people, which is so cool.”
But, more importantly, Rice – travelling for work from Melbourne to New York to London to LA in the fortnight we arrange this interview – is living the dream she set out for herself.
Over the past decade, she’s worked across major franchise blockbusters (Spider-Man), auteur cinema (The Beguiled), prestige television (Mare of Easttown) and the stage (MTC’s My Sister Jill) with some of the biggest stars in the world – all in roles that go far beyond “the girlfriend” or “the love interest”. Some of her most recent parts include Cady Heron (the lead role originally played by Lindsay Lohan) in the 2023 remake of Mean Girls – a generation-defining text for women (and gay men) in the 2000s. And Bailey Michaels in The Last Thing He Told Me, a strong-willed young woman who fights to find the truth about her family alongside her stepmother, Hannah (Jennifer Garner).
The latter, an Apple TV series based on Laura Dave’s 2021 bestselling novel of the same name, is a Hello Sunshine show: Reese Witherspoon’s production company that made its name taking female-focused literary works (Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere) – cannily anointed as hot reads in Reese’s Book Club – to the screen.
“It’s so exciting to work with them,” Rice says, ahead of the season two premiere. “When Big Little Lies came out, it felt like a huge moment. I think it really kicked something off. [This company was] telling stories about women – and good ones too. Where the women do interesting things!” The eager young actor auditioned multiple times for Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere.
“This is an [action-thriller] with two women in the lead,” she says of this latest show. “Jen Garner has talked about Hannah being ‘the grown-up’ in the room; she’s the one who people look to. We did a panel a couple of days ago with Reese and Laura Dave, and they were saying ‘women save themselves all the time in real life’. So we should see that in our stories, too.”
The first season of The Last Thing He Told Me began with the mysterious disappearance of Bailey’s father, Owen (Game of Thrones′ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and followed Bailey and Hannah’s action-packed attempts to track him down. Despite an initially thorny relationship, the pair work to uncover dark secrets about the family’s past and emerge with a stronger bond through the adversity. Season two takes place five years later, with Bailey now aged 21, as the pair’s new normal is dramatically disturbed once again.
“What I love about both characters is that they’re very headstrong,” Rice says. “They have a strong idea of what’s right and wrong ... And I love that they have this healthy relationship now – we can see how far that they’ve come. Bailey hasn’t lost her edge. But she’s just a little less spiky now.
“We see a lot of difficult mother-daughter relationships on screen. I’ve played it a lot! So it’s really nice to see this positive representation. I have a really good relationship with my mum. [A real understatement: Angourie and her mother, playwright Kate Rice, have written two young adult novels together, the second coming out in May.]
“I think that also comes with Bailey growing up. I’ve felt that as well: I’ll always be [my mum’s] little girl, in a sense. But our relationship has changed and evolved as I’ve become an adult, and I like how you see that with Bailey, too.
“It definitely felt like a breath of fresh air to play someone closer to my age … There is so much wild and messy emotion with playing teenagers.”
This new season marks the first time Rice has played a character who has left their teenage years – a big milestone for a former child star and the beginning of a whole new era in her career. In just a couple of months, she’ll also star as a uni student in Finding Emily, a romcom from British production company Working Title (known best for feelgood hits such as Bridget Jones and Love Actually).
“I don’t see a lot of high school stuff coming through any more,” she says. “It’s fun to see what else is out there.”
Rice is careful to not rule out teenage roles in the future. It’s a smart business move, considering how convincingly she can still play younger, but there’s creative reasoning behind it, too. She points out she played a 16-year-old in Steal Away, an Afrofuturist psychological thriller that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The characters in that film “go through so much, I felt I kind of had to be 23 to do it. I couldn’t have done that when I was 16.”
This is one in a string of passion projects Rice has been excited to pursue recently. Plus, she goes on, there are plenty of “interesting ways” to play with age on screen too: “Did you ever watch PEN15?” She praises the TV comedy, in which 32-year-old co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle hilariously played cringeworthy 13-year-old versions of themselves.
“Of course only women in their 30s could have the strength and vulnerability to actually go there.” It’s a funny comment for someone not yet even in her late-20s, who was not alive in 2000 when that show is set. But, always wise beyond her years, she’s not wrong.
And would any of these exciting new roles bring her home any time soon?
“I hope so!” Rice says, cautious of her wording, hinting that independent projects take a very long time to get confirmed. “I love working in Australia … I just want to act in my own accent!”
