Throughout award season, Hailee Steinfeld was doing a great job dressing her age. Her choices were appropriate, attractive, adorable. Then last night she showed up at the MTV Movies Awards and suddenly there was a new message.

On Uma Thurman? Susan Sarandon? Jennifer Aniston? It’s a perfect pantsuit.

On 14 year old Hailee? There must have been more options.

So what’s behind this?

Well, Hailee will be playing Juliet in a new adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. The screenplay was written by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey, The Young Victoria, Gosford Park) and he wanted to stay true to the age of the era, the age that Shakespeare intended Juliet to be. Only not played by a man with a high voice but an actual girl.

Romeo has not yet been announced but whoever it is, he’ll be getting pretty close to Hailee. This is what the script calls for:

“They (Romeo and Juliet) start undressing each other - slowly, gently and carefully until they are naked. They are eternal figures in a Raphael painting. Romeo then carries her to bed, kissing her again and again as they explore uncharted territory. Then they make love, transported into each other's soul.”

Why am I so uncomfortable when it’s in writing like that? And also... on a film set, there’s an entire crew that will try not to be uncomfortable watching Hailee make it happen. They’ll use a double of course for the hard core shots but the intimacy of the scene will no doubt require her to be more present than not present. So here we go again with the parent pimping. A move like this is certainly good for the career, I guess, but should a 14 year old girl be concerned already with her career?

Anyway, that might explain why she was so grown up last night, at least by wardrobe. In demeanour, the poor thing, Hailee seemed infinitely more immature and inexperienced than many of the kids in attendance in the auditorium - like she didn’t know how to behave during a concert, like she hadn’t been with friends before, screaming and jumping up and down to the music and being silly and generally creating forever memories. That’s also Taylor Lautner’s problem.


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Photos from Wenn.com