Peekaboo!

New Zealand actress Thomasin Mckenzie is a fresh new face to know

ON AN ABSURDLY BEAUTIFUL autumn day, Thomasin McKenzie is contemplating the blazing trees of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which are peacocking in bursts of reds and yellows. It was McKenzie’s own radiance—as well as her deep love of the outdoors—that helped secure her breakout role in last year’s Leave No Trace, Debra Granik’s quietly devastating film about a thirteen-year-old girl and her combat-veteran father living off the grid in the Oregon forest. Obsessed with the script, the Kiwi actress sent Granik videos of herself as well as “a little self-portrait,” as McKenzie calls it. “I got a GoPro, and I took it on a run with me through the New Zealand bush, so you see the landscape and my dog, Toto, behind me.” Blown away by the candidate, Granik cast her from afar—and changed the character’s name from Caroline to Tom. “She provided these textured layers” to the script, Granik says.