Mia Threapleton knows she’ll be a Halloween costume.
It’s something she’s been told often since signing on for a starring role in “The Phoenician Scheme” (in theaters nationwide June 6), the quirky new offering from director Wes Anderson. His idiosyncratic characters have become frequent fodder for spooky season, and Threapleton’s pipe-puffing, smoky-eyed novitiate Liesl is destined to join their dress-up ranks.
Every time someone says that, “it just feels more and more bizarre,” says Threapleton, 24, the daughter of Kate Winslet and filmmaker Jim Threapleton. The chance to create a new Anderson character “still feels surreal. Every day, I seem to be waking up and just thinking, ‘Oh, my God, how is this happening?’ ”
”Phoenician Scheme” follows Liesl as she’s plucked from the convent by her estranged father, Zsa-zsa (Benicio del Toro), to help him get his affairs in order after a near-death experience. The comedy is perfectly tailored to Threapleton, who shares her mom’s self-deprecating charm and delightful wit.
Here’s what to know about the rising star:
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Mia Threapleton initially wanted to be a marine biologist
As a young kid obsessed with whales and docuseries “The Blue Planet,” Threapleton dreamed for many years of becoming a marine biologist. “I feel far more at home under the water than floating on top of it – sadly, I don’t have gills,” Threapleton quips. “I still love the natural world. And then at some point, I realized that I’m horrifyingly dyslexic and can’t do quick math, so I don’t think that’s quite going to go the way I planned.”
How Jodie Foster sparked her love of acting
Growing up, Threapleton recalls putting on shows in her garden and playing a lion in an after-school drama club at age 7. She adored Anderson’s movies “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” although it was seeing a young Jodie Foster in gangster musical “Bugsy Malone” that inspired her to become an actress. “I remember thinking, ‘This person is amazing!’ I wanted to be her,” Threapleton says.
Eventually, at 15, she started signing up to casting sites, sending her information “out into the ether” for open calls and auditions. Her parents were initially unaware: “I didn’t actually tell them I’d done that,” Threapleton says. “That wasn’t a conscious decision, I just kind of forgot to tell them – as you do!”
She made her major film debut in the dystopian drama ‘Shadows’
At 13, Threapleton made a brief cameo in 2014’s “A Little Chaos” alongside her mom. But it was the 2020 post-apocalyptic thriller “Shadows,” after she graduated high school, that marked her first professional acting role. “I was so relieved to not be in school anymore, so when I was done, I threw myself into wanting to audition,” Threapleton says. “It was the first-ever full film script that I had seen properly and I just inhaled it into my brain.”
The audition process lasted for a couple of weeks before she learned she got the part: “I was carrying laundry downstairs when my phone rang. I just sat on the floor – I couldn’t believe I’d done that.”
Mia Threapleton also made a movie with famous mom Kate Winslet
The up-and-comer has worked steadily ever since, with roles in Apple TV+ series “The Buccaneers” and Starz’s “Dangerous Liaisons.” She also starred in the British TV film “I Am Ruth” with her mom and brother Joe Anders (whose dad is Sam Mendes). Winslet won best actress at the British Academy Television Awards (BAFTA) for the mother-daughter drama, which tackles how social media harms mental health.
On the set, “I did learn that my mum and I are extremely different when it comes to the ways that we prepare and the things we find useful,” Threapleton says. “I mean, we’ve got different brains; we’re different people. It was a really fascinating experience and an incredibly intense experience at the same time, just because of the subject matter.”
There’s one major misconception about being Kate Winslet’s daughter
Despite being the daughter of an Oscar-winning A-lister, Threapleton insists that her childhood was normal: filled with “running around in fields, getting really dirty knees and making pillow forts.”
“It does seem like this misconception that people have,” Threapleton says. “I really didn’t go to film sets as a kid – I could count on one and a half hands the amount of times that I did. My mum really kept it very separate: Home was home and work was work. The analogy that feels most accurate is that it would’ve felt like a lawyer taking their child into a courtroom.”
Now, “I’m really grateful I didn’t have those experiences as a kid because it meant that in the few opportunities that I have had to do work, I’ve learned an awful lot. And that’s all just happened through my own experiences of doing those things.”
She hopes Wes Anderson asks her back after ‘Phoenician Scheme’
One of Threapleton’s favorite recent films is “Anatomy of a Fall,” and she’s itching to work with Sandra Hüller next. She has not yet had a conversation about reuniting with Anderson, now that she’s part of his troupe.
“I’m just taking every day one day at a time,” Threapleton says. “I didn’t think this was going to happen for me. I had so many different backup plans: Could I be a photographer? A painter? A sound engineer? What could I do that’s still creative if this doesn’t work? So I’m just letting it all wash around me right now.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mia Threapleton on ‘misconception’ of being Kate Winslet’s daughter
