Although Renesmee grew up startlingly fast in the Twilight saga,
it took a bit longer in real life for Mackenzie Foy to go from young starlet to bombshell.
Now that she's all grown up, Foy's transformation is seriously stunning.
Mackenzie Foy joined the entertainment industry pretty early in her life.
She started working at age 3, as she explained to Refinery29, but
it wasn't on the big screen just yet. Foy landed her first role as a model in 2003,
posing in subsequent photoshoots for Guess, Ralph Lauren, Gap, and Garnet Hill.
It was while she was busy being seen in print and TV ads everywhere that she was bitten by the
entertainment bug. However, even at an early age, Foy knew she wanted to eventually find herself in
the film business. During a photo shoot for Gap when she was 9-years-old, Foy revealed:
"I want to be a movie director when I grow up."
Foy has never known anything else other than the spotlight. Though she grew up with no other
family members in the film industry, she was lucky enough to grow up in Los Angeles and was
a local to the show business that surrounded her. As an aspiring child star, Foy also had
some pretty supportive parents who encouraged her career aspirations and cheered her on all the way.
Little did she know, her big break in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 would soon be coming.
Shortly after becoming a child model, Mackenzie Foy started appearing in ads on the small screen,
booking roles in commercials for big name companies, including Barbie,
Pantene, Burger King, and Ross. From appearing in print to making her way on to the big screen,
it seemed like an easy — and obvious — transition. Yet,
during her endeavor to become a director, Foy's time on TV made her have a huge realization.
She told IndieWire that at the age of 8, she knew she wanted to become an actress.
Lucky for her, some of the commercials she appeared in required her to act out scenes.
From there, Foy officially joined the entertainment industry in 2009
as an extra on scripted television shows. She had small appearances
in three pretty popular ones at the time, 'Til Death, Hawaii Five-0, and Flashforward. Though
she only appeared in a single episode for each series, she was clearly on her way to stardom.
The opportunities were coming quickly after her, too. It only took three television
episodes before casting directors for films came calling for this aspiring actress.
Many young movie stars don't get their first film in a major franchise, but Mackenzie Foy sure did.
At only 9 years old, she was cast as Renesmee Cullen in the Twilight saga. Crazy enough,
she had no idea how major the series was to Twi-hards at the time, telling Hollywood Life,
"Looking back at it, it is really just...
I see that I was really, really lucky to be a part of something like that."
The young actor starred alongside some major names.
From teen heartthrob Taylor Lautner to Kristen Stewart to Robert Pattinson,
it was an incredible experience for someone just starting out in the business.
Foy told USA Today she lost five baby teeth over the course of filming, and she even started up
something special for her older castmates. As she explained to E! News, Foy started a swear
jar during filming, and even raised quite a bit of money — all of which she donated to Saint Judes.
"I think she made a couple thousand dollars."
While Foy learned her fair share of bad words from the Breaking Dawn films,
she gained a lot more from it than just that. The actress told Refinery29,
"What I learned on that set has really helped me in the rest of my career."
Landing the role as Renesmee in the Twilight saga seemed to prepare Mackenzie Foy for the horror
that was to come — and no, we don't mean Twilight ruined her career,
as some of the franchise's stars have claimed. The year Breaking Dawn – Part 2 hit theaters,
Foy landed in her next big project — and it was a pretty scary one. She appeared in two episodes of
R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour in 2012, acting alongside strange spirits and spooky dolls.
Funnily enough, behind-the-scenes of the supernatural vampire saga,
Foy had a lot of experience with strange dolls. Since Renesmee ages so quickly throughout Breaking
Dawn, Foy's face had to be placed via CGI on various people and objects throughout the film.
That was the production team's creative solution after the first incarnation of baby Renesmee
freaked out the cast and crew so badly that they decided to scrap it altogether.
Since she was used to starring in supernatural stories on the big screen,
it only made sense that she followed The Haunting Hour with The Conjuring in 2013.
There, she was able to act alongside other stars her age for the very first time,
including Joey King, with whom she quickly became close friends.
As Mackenzie Foy's dream of starring in major motion pictures was coming true,
there was still something else she was pretty passionate about off-screen.
In an interview with The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon,
Foy revealed that she practices taekwondo when she's not working or attending school.
Foy also gave Fallon a demonstration of her skills during the interview.
It's not just a hobby for her, either. Behind-the-scenes, Foy has worked her way up
to becoming a second degree black belt. Initially, martial arts was a way for Foy to bond with her
brother when she was only 8 years old. During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Foy said:
"But yeah, It was just something my brother and I started doing,
and we both really liked it and kind of just stuck with it."
And it's a good thing she did. As an emerging actress, her career was still ever-evolving,
and taekwondo was about to help her broaden the types of the roles she was getting.
Mackenzie Foy's career took another star turn when she landed a role in Christopher Nolan's
Interstellar in 2014. Amazingly, Foy admitted to HeyUGuys that she never read the script.
Instead, she wanted to be surprised every day when she arrived on set, and also when she saw
the final cut play out on screen. Many more surprises came for the young movie star, too.
Her role as Murph in the sci-fi screenplay led Foy to receiving her first major award — the
Saturn Award for best performance by a young actor. She was also nominated for
a Critics' Choice Award and a Teen Choice Award, solidifying not only this young star's fanbase,
but the respect and admiration of her peers and colleagues as well.
Although Foy probably got a lot of her Twi-hard fans to theaters to see Interstellar, that was
where the similarities between the films ended. She admitted to BlackTree TV that Interstellar
was a lot different than Twilight. Though a lot of the film took place in outer space,
many of the sets were very real, unlike the green screens that were used during many scenes
of Breaking Dawn. Recalling her experience on the Interstellar set, Foy told an interviewer,
"Not having to pretend was definitely very
interesting [...] I don't even know if I'll be able to do that again."
However, her next major movie role would allow her to do even more.
When Mackenzie Foy turned 17 years old, she achieved something that many girls can only
dream of: becoming a Disney princess. She was cast as Clara in the retelling of The
Nutcracker and the Four Realms in 2018. As if working on a Disney movie wasn't magical enough,
Foy also got a Barbie doll created after her character. Obviously, it looked a lot like her.
Foy's character wasn't like any other princess turned kids' toy,
however. Foy was required to do all sorts of stunts and fight scenes while playing Clara.
That's when her favorite pastime, taekwondo, truly came in handy. Foy told The IMDB Show,
"They were like, 'Hey, you do martial arts. Do you want to kick somebody?' And I was like, 'Yes!"
Foy also had to undergo intense training prior to filming, telling CineMovie,
"I'm glad I had that training to kind of help me out in doing those stunts,
so that I could do them properly and thoroughly enjoy them."
For a few months, Foy even spent time training with stunt horses in order to perfect her most
intense scenes, which was something that would also come in handy later on.
Having experience riding horses really helped Mackenzie Foy out when it came to being cast in
her second Disney movie, 2020's Black Beauty. The studio seemed to have planned it all perfectly,
too. To prep for production, she only had to train for two weeks. Foy told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I'd worked with horses before [...] I learned how to ride on my previous film."
Because of that, the young actress once again did all of her own stunts. She even got her own
horse to ride at home when they wrapped. Foy read the book numerous times as a child, too,
so she knew exactly what to do when filming began. Obviously, anyone who's read Black Beauty knows
that the main character in the book is male. However, in Disney's re-telling of the tale,
the story was modernized with a young woman as that character, hence, Foy's role.
The horse who played Beauty wasn't the only beautiful thing about being in the movie. Shooting
in South Africa was something completely new for Foy, as well. She told The Hollywood Reporter,
"[South Africa is] stunning. It's one of the most amazing places that I've ever been,
and I definitely have to go back one day."
What's next for Mackenzie Foy? Another screenplay full of fight scenes seems to be in her future.
In a November 2020 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Foy admitted,
"I would love to do an action film [...] I think that would be so much fun."
For someone who's ready to take on her own stunts, it seems like the obvious next adventure for Foy.
One franchise in particular has always caught her eye. In an interview with Fan Moguls, Foy
revealed that she's a huge Marvel fan. In 2017, she got the opportunity to walk down the Thor:
Ragnarok red carpet, which she described as a, quote, "fan girl's dream come true."
Seeing as she's already a Disney star, and Disney owns Marvel, it's almost a
no-brainer that becoming a superhero is in this young star's future. However,
that's not necessarily what Foy has in mind. She'd love to play the villain
instead. Why? Well, as Foy told Marie Claire Malaysia,
"Because villains are awesome and they always have great clothes."
While Mackenzie Foy has been busy making it on the big screen,
she's never given up on that dream to direct she's had ever since she was only a kid. Don't
get her wrong, though. She'd still love to appear on our screens, telling IndieWire,
"I want to act for the rest of my life. And I also want to pursue directing."
Foy has a reasoning behind her tireless pursuit to one day helm a film, and it
stems from her early fascination of watching the director of Twilight work. She told IndieWire,
"Watching Bill Condon direct Twilight, kind of made me think,
'OK yeah, I really want to do this now [...] This idea that you can make an image
in your head and be in full control of how it comes out — I thought that was really cool."
Perhaps we'll see Foy directing herself in future films, like Bradley Cooper in A Star
is Born, Ben Affleck in Argo, Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby, or
John Krasinski in A Quiet Place. Many actors turned directors are men, but Foy's films
will be different — a directorial debut told through a woman's eyes. Foy told Refinery29,
"I want to show people different kinds of views on life through film. I'm working on getting there!"
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