Age no barrier for best-actress nominees

• Image Credit: REUTERS
• Quvenzhane Wallis

‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ star Quvenzhane Wallis is an actress of talent, poise and maturity well beyond her years.

She was only five years when she auditioned and six when she played the part of Hushpuppy, a little girl of fierce strength and resourcefulness living with her daddy in a squalid slab of Louisiana swampland known as The Bathtub. She was just a regular kid from nearby Houma, Louisiana — she’d never even acted before, and actually pretended to be a year older than she was to be considered.

Now, at only nine, Wallis is the youngest-ever actress nominee at the Academy Awards. Altogether, ‘Beasts’ has four nominations at the February 24 ceremony, including best picture.

Director Benh Zeitlin doesn’t think nine is too young for such an honour. Zeitlin, who is up for a best-director Oscar himself with just his first feature, praised Wallis for the incredible sense of self she displayed from the beginning. But he also recalled one day when she seemed to be struggling on set, and he took her aside to ask what was wrong.