On April 10, 2015, Larry T. Collins published a review in the Springfield News-Leader, the newspaper of Springfield, Missouri, about the new staging of The Wizard of Oz at the Landers Theater in that city. There he highlighted the talent of one of the two teenagers who played Dorothy, Cailee Spaeny, pointing out that both she and Rachel Haik had a very strong voice, a winning personality and a lot of heart. Almost a decade later, Haik lives in San Diego, earned a master’s degree in communication from the University of London, works in marketing, and sings in her free time. Spaeny’s story has been very different.
Obsessed with becoming a professional actress, in the years that followed she systematically traveled with her mother in a van from Springfield to Los Angeles to audition in search of a career in film. As a result of such effort, a talent that oozes out of her pores and a good deal of luck, she was nominated at the last Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Dramatic Film Actress.
In September, the 25-year-old actress won the prestigious Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival for her impeccable performance as Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s most recent film, Priscilla, which premiered on February 14. Although many have learned of her existence when Francis Ford’s daughter offered her the role of her life, Cailee already had a very solid career by then.
The first job she got after so many trips to Los Angeles, nothing less than the main female role in Pacific Rim: Uprising, alongside John Boyega and Scott Eastwood, was followed by another of some importance in Bad Times at the El Royale, in which she He had the pleasure of acting alongside Jeff Bridges and Dakota Johnson. That 2018 was certainly fantastic, since Spaeny also released A Question of Gender, in which she worked with Felicity Jones and The Vice of Power, playing the same character as Amy Adams at 17 years old.
In 2020 he debuted on the small screen with one of the main roles in the science-fiction series Devs by Alex Garland, in which his character was a man, and in that same year he released Blumhouse: Young Men and Witches, inspired by the classic 1996 horror film starring Neve Campbell. His resume is completed with the apocalyptic comedy How It Ends, not released in Spain, the award-winning miniseries Mare of Easttown, with Kate Winslet and the less celebrated The First Lady, in which she played Eleanor Roosevelt when she was young.
As for Priscilla, at a press conference for Golden Globe and Critics Choice voters in which Cailee participated with Sofía, the young actress recalled that she initially received a call from the prestigious director for a meeting, without being told. What was it about. When they met for coffee in New York, Coppola pulled out his tablet and began showing him photos of Priscilla when he was young, flat out offering him the role of her. Spaeney said yes without hesitation: “In my house we all loved Elvis. We went to Graceland all the time and he was a part of my childhood. Obviously he knew that Priscilla was Elvis’ wife and knew of the iconic photos of the two of them, but he had not heard her side of the story. Additionally, I grew up watching Sofia’s films and was always fascinated by the way she tells stories of young women. “It’s something very rare in the film industry these days,” Cailee told the journalists present.
The actress has not wasted the exposure that working with Sofia has given her. She has already finished filming the new episode of Alien, which with the subtitle of Romulus has been directed by Uruguayan Fede Álvarez, which will be released sometime this year. But first, on April 16 we will see her again in Civil War, an apocalyptic thriller that marks the return of Alex Garland to the cinema and is also the debut of the independent production company A24 in action blockbusters.