15 Things You Didn't Know About "13 Reasons Why" Star Katherine Langford
This post contains spoilers for 13 Reasons Why.
1. She's from Perth, Australia. Yep, that natural-sounding American accent is just for 13 Reasons Why. Here's how she sounds when she's not playing Hannah Baker.
2. She's athletic. Katherine was a nationally-ranked swimmer in high school.
3. Acting wasn't always her dream job. She thought she wanted a career in medicine, or if not that, politics. Musical theater was her third choice, she told EW.
4. Lady Gaga inspired her to get into the arts. At 16, Katherine saw Lady Gaga in concert. "It was like a spiritual experience," she told EW, "I was so moved by her performance that I went home and that week I taught myself how to play piano." During her final year of high school, she became more interested in music and acting, and chose to pursue acting full-time after high school.
5. Her resume is impressive. She studied at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art and the Principal Academy of Performing Arts in Perth.
6. She's had roles in several plays. Including Evita and Godspell.
7. 13 Reasons Why is her first TV series. Actually, it's her first major acting credit of any kind.
8. She landed the role after auditioning via Skype. The casting director didn't meet her in person before choosing her to play Hannah.
9. She had just 10 days to get an O-1 visa. In just a week and a half, Katherine discovered she landed the role of a lifetime, had to pack up her life in Australia, get a visa (no easy feat!), and move to California to start working. Whoa.
10. She researched Hannah's character carefully. To prep for the scene in which Bryce sexually assaults Hannah in a hot tub, she spoke to a psychiatrist to understand what her character might be thinking and feeling in the moment.
11. She and Dylan Minnette (Clay Baker) are great friends IRL. "Every time I got on set - playing Hannah Baker - it's kind of like going through six months of bullying," she said. "But every single scene I had with Dylan, it would put a smile on my face. He would always be there to kind of lighten the day."
11. She has two movies in the works. The Misguided, an Australian flick about a young man who has to betray his girlfriend to save his brother's life, debuts later this year. In 2018, she acts opposite Jennifer Garner in Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, about a gay teen who comes out to his classmates.
12. Selena Gomez convinced her to make her Instagram public. "It was a bit of a big decision for me actually, because I wanted to be an actor purely for the acting work," Katherine said. "I have never been attracted to increasing my popularity or hireability by being on Instagram." But when Selena suggested that she could connect to fans who relate to 13 Reasons Why on social media, she decided to go public.
13. She loved working with Selena Gomez. "When I met her, it was the last day of set and she had just flown out from the AMAs, where she did that incredible speech and she said something about, 'The people that know me, what they know about me is that I care about people,'" she recalled to THR. "And that sums up Selena in a very truthful way. You can tell this story means a lot to Selena, and it means a lot to her fans. Even though Selena is Selena Gomez and ridiculously busy, Mandy and Selena were always there for us. They sent us emails and checked up on us and made sure we were OK. I give them so much praise for holding onto this story until they were absolutely happy with how it was going to be told. With Netflix, we were able to tell this story in a way it needed to be told."
13. She's a Netflix junkie. Filming 13 Reasons Why was heavy work, so to unwind, she'd relax in front of a feel-good comedy. "I watched a lot of The Office," she said.
14. She loves historical fiction. "Anything written in the French Revolution, that kind of era, is so poignant," she told Marie Claire. "I got into history when I was 11 years old, and it all started with the Titanic. I'd read books in the library about it. Of course I've seen the movie, too - I don't think I've ever cried that much."
15. Her childhood crush was Orlando Bloom as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings. Tbh, same.
Hannah Orenstein is the assistant features editor at Seventeen.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram!
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