Filmmakers are always taking a major risk when they choose to include children in their roster of characters. Often, directors will rely heavily on a child’s natural cuteness and organic naïveté to get them through each scene in a way that doesn’t undermine the storytelling. However, when it’s time for real plot movement and character development, a poor performance from a child can rapidly disrupt the suspension of disbelief required to keep an audience engaged. Convincing acting performances require years of real-life experience and technical training — something young actors typically lack. Still, every so often young actors are able to turn out grounded, powerful performances that have even resulted in Oscar nominations. Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, and Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit (2010) are fairly recent examples of this.

Part of the reason these kinds of child performances are so rare is because most conventional directors prefer to leave wiggle room for their actors to make choices on their own, based on the characters they have created. With young actors who don’t have much training, that doesn’t always go very well. Young actors require specificity, they’re not usually mature enough to understand the difference between a strong acting choice and a weak one, and if they are uncertain about what the adults in the room want from them, they can lose their mooring. This is why the atmosphere Wes Anderson cultivates in his filmmaking process is the perfect environment for young actors to thrive.

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Young Actors Need Wes Anderson’s Tonal Specificity
Image via Focus Features

Unlike other filmmakers, Wes Anderson has never appeared to have trouble pulling incredible performances from the young actors in his movies. Anderson has an advantage over other filmmakers because his style requires so much tonal specificity. The dryness of his scripts removes the need for a wide variety of acting choices and makes it easy for the young actors to match the energy the script demands. It also helps to maintain tonal consistency with the adults, so it feels like the young actors fit into the world Anderson creates.

Moonrise Kingdom has many examples of Wes Anderson’s tone working in favor of young actors. One notable example takes place when the Khaki Scouts are attacking Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward). During the pandemonium of the scene, a bow and arrow is fired, striking a dog and killing it. Afterward, Suzy and Sam are standing over the dead dog. Suzy asks Sam, “Was he a good dog?” To which Sam replies, “Whose to say? He didn’t deserve to die.” Both lines are delivered facing forward into the camera, completely deadpan. There is no embellishment, no overacting, and no cutesy winking at the camera. Their deliveries are simple, grounded, and incredibly specific. It matches the tone of the rest of the movie and yet stands out as a hilarious moment that showcases just how great a well-directed young actor can be. This tonal consistency is also a major reason the romance between Sam and Suzy is so believable. Wes Anderson has established an environment where the way they speak and act feels conventional. He makes them look good!

Wes Anderson Writes Mature Dialogue For Kids
Image via Touchstone Pictures

In addition to cultivating a tone that sets his young actors up for success, Wes Anderson also trusts young actors with more sophisticated dialogue. As a teenager, Jason Schwartzman stole many hearts playing Max Fischer, a wisecracking prep school student in the movie, Rushmore. In order for the movie to really work, Schwartzman had to convincingly square up with the adults in the film, Herman (Bill Murray), and Rosemary (Olivia Williams). To accomplish this, Anderson approached Max’s dialogue with the maturity of a highly intelligent adult and trusted Schwartzman’s ability to lean into the tone for a convincing performance. The result is frequently cited by many as a fan favorite (or at least top-tier) Wes Anderson film.

In a Wes Anderson Film, Confidence is Key
Image via Focus Features

Another key to Schwartzman’s success in Rushmore is his confidence. This is a common thread among young actors in all of Wes Anderson’s films. Max’s brash confidence is the main factor in Herman legitimately feeling threatened by him in his courting of Rosemary. Anderson tends to portray young people in this way in contrast to his adult characters who tend to be more uncertain.

In his most recent film, Asteroid City, Wes Anderson is exploring the ideas of uncertainty and unease in adults, and placing them parallel to an ensemble of confident, genius teenagers. Asteroid City also features even younger performers who display even more confidence despite their childlike ignorance. A scene in the film that demonstrates this idea features the Tom Hanks character, Stanley, trying to convince his three granddaughters not to bury their mother’s ashes on a motel plot. Each of the young girls displays a quiet yet assertive confidence in what they are doing, eventually convincing Stanley to leave the mother’s ashes buried in the spot for the time being. Because the kids were so sure of what they wanted, Stanley was more easily persuaded.

Another example of this from Asteroid City manifests in Billy (Brayden Frasure), the overly specific praying student of the church youth group. When June (Maya Hawke) asks him to pray, he confidently rattles off a long list of topics to include in the prayer. This is a jarring contrast to June who is very clearly struggling to maintain her confidence. Billy functions as a prime example of Wes Anderson’s child-directing prowess as he culminates the tone, confidence, and mature line of thinking that makes the young people in these films so believable.

It Still Takes Talent

While so much of the success of these performances can be attributed to Wes Anderson’s extraordinary directing ability, it should also be noted that the young people he selects for these roles are incredibly talented. While good directing can be a determining factor, it’s still frivolous if the young actors are unable to pull off what he is trying to accomplish. The purpose of this article is not to claim that these young actors are nothing without Anderson, but rather to praise Anderson for his remarkably high success rate.

Ultimately, Wes Anderson’s ability to direct young actors is something of a super-power, only enhanced by his incredibly specific style of filmmaking. He’s so good at setting his young actors up for success that they always feel like seasoned actors that never distract, only enhance the stories and themes his movies explore.