Sophia Lillis is pondering her brief spell as a teenage self-loather. “I was horrible at socialising at middle school,” she winces, speaking over FaceTime from her Brooklyn family kitchen. “I was talking about this with my brother,” she says. “We realised we both hated ourselves.” As an actor with a taste for dark parts, she needs a little something to draw back on from School. “It’s just this really weird phase, where you’re trying to fit in. I was that outsider who thought, ‘Man, I feel like it’s good to be an outsider, you know, be my own person,’ but at the same time I was trying to get as many friends as possible.”

Sophia is a highly promising young actor with a special gift for moody defiance, deployed to maximum effect in IT, Sharp Objects and most recently as the compelling, telekinetic star of Netflix’s I’m Not OK With This. She has a raw, tomboyish charm, dry sense of humour and something of the young Ellen Page about her.

Sophia is spending her self-isolation time learning to cook (“I’ve done it once before. It was really bad”) and playing video games. She’s a pleasingly bluff 18-year-old whose picket fence New York life feels at odds with the teen diffidence she brings to screen. “You know everyone goes through things,” she says. “It’s not all happy-go-lucky all the time. I feel like I’m really lucky. I have such a nice family, but not everyone has that. I want to portray that on the screen.”

Sophia first discovered acting aged seven when her stepfather cast her as the lead role in his final Film School project. “It seemed like I was enjoying it,” she shrugs, “so [my mother and stepfather] thought, ‘let’s put her up for some extra classes, she needs to do something with her life’.”

Set in a sleepy Pittsburg town, Sophia plays Sydney Novak in I’m Not OK With This, a High School misfit going through changes, grieving the loss of a father who died from an apparent suicide, nursing the weird spots on her thighs and falling hopelessly in love with her best friend Dina, who just got a new boyfriend. She’s angry at school, her teachers, her classmates and the world. Just because. “She has a lot of emotions,” deadpans Sophia.

Directed by The End of the F***ing World’s Jonathan Entwistle, the show offers a relatable, witty snapshot of the agony and angst of being teenage. “Growing up, you always feel like you need to be this normal person,” she says. “But everyone feels like a freak.” The more she enveloped herself in the role, the more she liked it. “I actually came to really look up to Sydney. Everyone has hardship. Usually it’s so hard to deal with, but she surprisingly deals with everything fairly well.”

Now that school is almost over for her, Sophia is looking for an apartment to rent so that she can focus on her career. Post-isolation, she’ll be getting started on her next big project, The Thicket, another thriller, opposite Peter Dinklage in which she plays a young kidnapped girl. “It’s such a weird experience acting, because I don’t know if I could say I have a job, because 75% of my job is finding a job,” she laughs.

On the cusp of a major acting career, she’s considering how much of herself to give away. “I’m more of a quiet person,” she says with a twinkle of the eye. “But I think once you get to know me, I’m very out there.”

SOURCE: THELOVEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

From playing Beverly Marsh in It to starring in Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This, Lillis is building an impressive résumé as she graduates from high school

Sophia Lillis is a bit of an old soul. She has a penchant for the word “rather” that doesn’t quite chime with being an 18-year-old who lives in Brooklyn. If she didn’t work so much, she would take up pottery classes. And she isn’t much for going out – even when the world isn’t in lockdown. It all seems a bit coy for a teenager on the brink of stardom.

Lillis is in the midst of building an impressive résumé. She had her first big hits playing Beverly Marsh in Stephen King’s 2017 thriller, It, and a younger Amy Adams in Sharp Objects in 2018. The following year, she landed the lead in Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase.

Lillis was seven when her stepdad first asked her to star in his class film project. But it wasn’t until she was in high school, finishing the filming of It – her first feature movie – that she finally figured out she wanted to act long-term.

Now she is starring the Netflix adaptation of Charles Forsman’s I Am Not Okay With This. Lillis plays Sydney Novak, an awkward 17-year-old coming to terms with her sexuality while getting over her dad’s suicide. Plus, Novak just so happens to have superpowers that are triggered by intense feelings – like a modern-day Matilda, but less PG.

I caught up with her to discuss her life in isolation now that she’s off set and stuck in New York for the foreseeable future. If we were able to meet in person as planned, we would have gone to Lillis’s favorite Brooklyn diner. She would have ordered pancakes or waffles and a side of sausages, and a vanilla egg cream (seltzer, milk, whipped cream and syrup, in case you were wondering).

Instead, we meet over Zoom, of course, but she tells me she still got dressed up for the chat. For her, that means swapping out two-day old pyjamas for one of her more colorful outfits (she usually just wears black) – a black top with flowers on it and a scraggly yellow jacket. Her characteristic short, ginger hair is tucked behind her ears and she’s wearing a huge grin on her face.

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW AT THEGUARDIAN.COM

And here are the rest of the outtakes of the photoshoot Christopher did with Sophia. Click on the gallery link below to see them full size.

One of this year’s best horror films thus far was one not a whole lot of people saw in theaters, but hopefully Osgood Perkins‘ Gretel & Hansel will soon find its audience on home video.

After making $21 million at the worldwide box office earlier this year, we’ve learned that the dark adaptation of the already-dark fairytale is headed home to Digital on April 7th.

Gretel & Hansel will then arrive on DVD and Blu-ray on May 5th.

The only included special feature is a “Storybook” featurette.

Directed by Osgood Perkins, the film is a terrifying reimagining of the beloved Brothers Grimm fairytale for a new generation.

From MGM’s Orion Pictures, the film stars Sophia Lillis (IT, IT: Chapter 2) as Gretel, newcomer Samuel J. Leakey as Hansel and Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact) as The Witch.

SOURCE: bloody-disgusting.com