Nikki Reed: the kid who made teens come alive on the screen

Interview, August, 2003 by Scott Lyle Cohen

Thirteen, a searing new film about two teenage girls, is the antithesis of typical teen fluff, but the relationship between its debut writer-director, Catherine Hardwicke, and debut writer-actor Nikki Reed plays like a movie of the week.

When Reed, then a Los Angeles sixth-grader, started "hanging out with the bad girls, ditching school, smoking weed, and messing around with boys," Hardwicke, her dad's ex-girlfriend, stepped in. They talked. They went for walks on the beach. Then one day two years ago, Hardwicke, a production designer who's worked on almost 20 films, suggested they write a screenplay together. "The number-one rule of writing is write what you know--or something like that," says Reed, now 15. "So I wrote about my experiences."

Thirteen, out later this month, stars Evan Rachel Wood as Tracey, a good girl who turns bad, and Reed as Evie, the bad girl with a big influence on her. Every parent's nightmare--stealing, cheating, lying, drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, self-mutilation--plays out under the undetecting nose of Tracey's mom (Holly Hunter), a recovering alcoholic dating a drug addict (Jeremy Sisto).

Reed's involvement makes Thirteen the grittiest, most honest portrait of teendom since Larry Clark's Kids (1995). She reveals, as only an insider could, the idiom and body language specific to the adolescents who hang out in the parking lots, malls, and streets in every town across America. "Most teen movies," says Reed, "are fantasies, like The Princess Diaries [2001]. But my movie is coming from a completely different angle, which is truth. This is what really happens." And as tough as Thirteen is to watch at times, it's impossible to turn away.

Scott Lyle Cohen is Interview's Senior Editor.