This week we chatted with rising star Ava Cantrell, who has gone from recurring roles in television and supporting roles in films to her first leading role in the new horror-thriller ABIGAIL where she stars as the titular character who has “an axe to grind” with some neighborhood bullies. Ava talks about the challenges of taking on a manipulative character and the physical challenges of nearly a month of night shoots working sundown to sun up, and also shares some advice for parents of child actors.
“Your parent’s support is so important as a child actor, it’s a very hard thing to do by yourself, so I would say [to parents] to be emotionally supportive of your kids,” she advises. “There’s a lot of rejection. You get so many no’s before you get a yes, [it’s important] to give your child the confidence to keep going and having that kind of grit you need to handle those no’s.”
A question often asked by our listeners refers to how they can get their first agents or managers, which is often seen as the quickest way to get the ball rolling in their careers. “I’ve had the same agent and manager, I haven’t switched because i love and adore my team and they understand me and what i’m looking for,” Ava shared. “They support me in the way that I need and I think that if you’re having trouble finding that then… sometimes you have to just wait it out, wait for the right fit. Keep looking for that right fit. I’m really happy with who I found, they’re my TEAM. At the Abigail premiere, I felt the love. So have patience and prioritize that good fit.”
In preparation for her performance in Abigail, Ava turned to two films with protagonists who live a double life: Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance in Nightcrawler and Christian Bale in American Psycho, to better understand the duality of her character. “Nightcrawler was a really big one for me because his character is trying to be really social and charismatic when he’s around everybody else, and at first it doesn’t really come across that wrong, there’s just something a little off about it,” she explained.
“The people around him are not really sensing how insane he is because they’re not seeing him behind closed doors. But once [the audience] sees that other side of him, the real side, it’s so different and weird and off-putting. Then [you question] ‘how are people not seeing how crazy he is?!’ I tried to emulate that with Abigail, and she tries to be really charismatic and likable, but she’s supposed to be TRYING to be that, and I add a little offness and fake energy there.”
You can see Ava Cantrell starring in ABIGAIL, now available to rent or stream on VOD.
