VANITY FAIR – She’s an Avengers regular and grew up with some very famous siblings, but Olsen has managed to carve out a steady, laid-back niche for herself in Hollywood. After some career choices she now wishes she maybe had played slightly differently, Olsen is back with two very different films and enjoying “nothing being too precious.”
Every time I wear these jeans I forget to ask for a black napkin,” Elizabeth Olsen laments, realizing white fuzz remnants have attached themselves to her black jeans. The actress drove herself to our lunch at a trendy Los Angeles eatery. She’s wearing a very low-key black long-sleeved shirt with the very low-key black pants, and she isn’t wearing any makeup. No one in the crowded patio area, a few days before the Fourth of July, seems to notice her, even though we are seated facing inward, our faces on full display for fellow lunch diners.
Olsen is an actress in one of the most successful film franchises of the decade and she bears a noticeable resemblance to her very high-profile, extremely successful fashion-designer older sisters: so it’s perhaps a bit surprising just how much she flies under the radar.
“[Sometimes] people are like, ‘Have we met before? You look familiar. You’re an actress? What have you been in?’” Olsen explains. “And then you have to start listing your credits, and you’re like, ‘Maybe the Avenger movies?’ ‘No, I’ve never seen a superhero movie.’ [Avengers] is what I always go to . . . I don’t look really like that person in the movie.”
She is inquisitive in a way that actors are not always. She looks up at me after digging in to our burratta appetizer, which I haven’t touched: “This is so good! Are you lactose intolerant?!” When I explain during a digression about live music that I’m always worried I’m blocking people’s views at concerts, she interjects, “By the way, I bet you are!”
