Top, bra, $1,150, skirt, $7,700, Miu Miu. Platforms, Anny Nord, $550.
While preparing to play Wendy in Disney+’s recently released Peter Pan & Wendy, Ever Anderson took lessons in sword fighting and flying—but learning what it means to live as a working actor is a deeper process. A love of pretending came early (princess and fairy games on the playground, playing with dolls long after her peers stopped), but leading a film, being a student, and maintaining friendships, and doing all those things well, is complicated.
Wearing a “Models Suck” T-shirt (which seems more like a wry nod to her mother Milla Jovovich than true rebellion), Anderson, 15, speaks breathlessly about beginning her career. “It’s a surreal experience, what I’ve found with acting and being on set.” Keira Knightley is a role model—she loves Atonement (“It’s the perfect film”) and Pride & Prejudice—and she dreams of being directed by Sofia Coppola or Quentin Tarantino (her father is writer and director Paul W. S. Anderson). She can’t wait to do romantic comedies and figures that in the next five years or so, she’ll be old enough to take one on.
Dress, Ralph Lauren Collection, $5,490.
While Anderson appeared in her father’s film Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, playing a younger version of her mother, and in Black Widow, Peter Pan & Wendy marks her first time leading a project. Before it was announced that she’d landed the role, she presented a confident front that disguised her uncertainty. “I found out that I got the role of Wendy at my friend’s house, after I had told my English teacher that I got it when I hadn’t yet,” she says. “I was so shocked because it was such a huge role and there were so many people that went out for it, so I thought, absolutely no way.”
Anderson spent eight months filming in Canada and the Faroe Islands. “It’s something that I’m never ever going to forget,” she says. While she was pulling long hours, she was also having a bit of fun with her castmates. “We got to play a few pranks on [co-star] Jude Law which was like, oh my God!,” she says. “We had a water gun fight with everyone at the end of main filming.”
Ever Anderson as Wendy in Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy.
Anderson is learning that much of acting comes down to being in the moment. “That’s actually something that my mom told me about,” she says. “She taught me to just be in it and be human.” She’s also “learned that 99 percent of an actor’s life is the time in between making films.” Recent days have been filled with school, painting, Japanese lessons, trying to read all the classics. I’ve just been trying to just continue doing the other things that I love, apart from acting,” she says. “Outside of Peter Pan, everything has just been really great.”
Dress, Ralph Lauren Collection, $5,490.
But she’s also upfront about the way that eight months of filming took her out of her social rhythms, and how she’s working to make it up to her friends: “I can be the person who gets caught up, and I don’t check in like I should be doing. I’ve definitely been trying to work on that,” she says. “I’ve been trying to do everything I can to catch up with my friends while I’m here and not working, so that I keep these connections alive, because I love my friends.”
When the time comes to return to set, wherever that may be, Anderson will be ready. “It’s indescribable when you find something that you really, really love and want to dedicate everything to it.”
Hair by Vernon François for Redken; makeup by Karo Kangas for Westman Atelier; produced by Rhianna Rule.
A version of this story appears in the May 2023 issue of ELLE.
Editor
Adrienne Gaffney is an editor at ELLE who previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.
