Hailee wears a LOEWE mother-of-pearl mini dress by Jonathan Anderson. Photographed by Greg Swales for the March 2025 Issue of Vogue Philippines
When you’re as insatiable as Hailee Steinfeld, every day becomes its own adventure.
It was likely that the neighbors could hear it. The muffled, melodic echoes of a young girl, maybe six or seven years old, belting at the top of her lungs. Where on earth was that sound coming from?
Follow the noise and you’ll find yourself at the odd house out in one of California’s quieter cities, where inside, at the bottom of the staircase and in front of a mirror, a tiny culprit stands with a microphone in hand and amplifier blaring close by. Hailee Steinfeld is singing, smiling, and oblivious, thoroughly enjoying the equipment she asked her parents for.
Those home concerts, she reveals, were absolutely unsolicited. “I would sing into that thing for hours. And I knew that [my parents] could hear me, the whole house could hear me. It was really for myself,” she says, before flashing a wicked smirk, “and they were just lucky enough to be in the next room.”
Music may have been an early passion for Hailee, but it certainly wasn’t her only one. She also flitted from horseback riding to dancing to basketball and back. Ironically, the interest that metamorphosed into a full-fledged career had nothing to do with courts or stables, but rather a large television in their living room. At eight years old, she recalls being transfixed by the sight of her cousin True in a televised advertisement. That’s what she wanted to do, she told her parents, immediately after running into their room. She wanted to be in commercials.
“It wasn’t even that I wanted to act,” she recounts. “I thought [commercials were] the pinnacle.” Her mom, who understood the level of commitment acting would require from her daughter, explained that it would be different from her previous pursuits. If she were to enroll Hailee in acting classes for a year, she really had to want it.
Luckily, the aspiring TV star was dedicated; she went to acting lessons for a year and loved it. “I felt a sense of home and a sense of self in all of it. And then my mom just continued to do research throughout that year, and we took headshots in our backyard. She sent them out to different agencies and only two called,” she says, brows furrowing for a second, clearly engrossed in the memory. “One thing led to the next, and here we are.”
Only Hailee isn’t here yet, at least not at this very moment. “She should be on in just a minute or so,” her publicist tells me. “She just wrapped up another conversation.”
It’s only 11AM in New York. Hailee is currently upstate in Buffalo, dressed comfortably in a dusty rose zip-up hoodie and bare-faced with her hair in a neat ponytail. For someone on her second call of the day, she’s surprisingly bright-eyed and bubbly.
At the time of our conversation, the actress is a few months shy of the release of Sinners, the Ryan Coogler-directed film she’s set to star in alongside Michael B. Jordan. In a dual role, Jordan plays twins returning to their hometown to trade a troubled life for a fresh start. Coogler is the Academy Award-nominated mind behind Creed and Black Panther, and his newest horror flick presents Hailee in her first on-screen movie role in eight years. If the prospect of her comeback is exciting in itself, then the mystique surrounding her act as Mary just amplifies it. In their first trailer, she appears exactly at the one-minute mark and precisely for one short second. The warm light envelops her, a slinky figure in a champagne slip dress, as she tantalizingly rolls her shoulders and fixates menacingly on an unseen subject.
The project is unlike anything she’s ever done or seen. The part challenged her in a way she’s never been challenged before, and she struggles slightly, attempting to explain how without giving too much away. Eventually, she shares that Sinners made her look into parts of her own life and encouraged a deeper appreciation for her heritage. “I find that with what I do, there’s always something to learn about yourself. But when you get to learn about yourself and your family, that’s something that can be really special.” She smiles before promising, “This will make sense when you see it.”
Born in the San Fernando Valley, Hailee has always been in touch with her cultural background through her family. Her mother Cheri is an interior designer, while her father Peter is a personal trainer. Hailee’s maternal grandfather Ricardo was half Filipino and half Black from Panglao, Bohol. She has a close bond with older brother Griffin, who tells Vogue, “She’s my best friend. I love watching her grow her skill set and experience new worlds. None of these different ‘worlds’ of entertainment are really the same, however she has mastered blending all of them together to create something that very, very few can do.”
Apart from being an Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and SAG-nominated actress, and Peabody Award winner, she is also a multi-platinum recording artist. Her widely popular 2010s hits are catching a second wind on TikTok: in a 15-second clip that features a girl dancing to Hailee’s “Starving” as if it were blasting in a club, a comment reads, “I want to thank you for showing me this masterpiece once again.” The video has 12 million views.
In 2019, Hailee served as executive producer for the first time on the set of Dickinson, the acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy-drama series on Emily Dickinson where she plays the titular character. She voiced Gwen Stacy in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse franchise and Vi in Netflix’s League of Legends-based series Arcane, and joined the Marvel universe as Kate Bishop in the miniseries Hawkeye, where she is the eponymous superhero’s protégé.
It was during the filming for Hawkeye that she was struck with the urge to jump into a wholly new venture. “I was looking for something that, like my music, connected me to people directly around the world. I think that’s harder to come by as an actor, and something that I’ve gotten a taste of as a musician.” After a period of yoga classes, cooking attempts, and beauty product hauls with her best friend Greer, Hailee wrote, “I came to obsess over these pockets of joy outside of my work. The thought often crossed my mind: How can I share these pieces of my life with you guys? That’s when the idea to start a fun, curated newsletter began percolating.”
Four years later, Beau Society launched in August 2024. In the weekly newsletter’s first edition, she chronicles the origins of its name: “No one in my family actually calls me Hailee; they call me Beau!” Playfully riffing off on the initials, her mom coined the expression “This is BS” during one of their fittings, and it stuck. Now it’s printed on sold out merch.
In the six months since BS went live, they racked up over 50,000 subscribers from all over the world. With nearly 30 letters at present, Hailee has touched on a wide array of topics summarized in punchy email subject lines: This soup is like a quesadilla…you can’t f*ck it up; The perfect show to binge this weekend (I’m biased); Holiday stress, anyone?
“I carry my Filipino heritage with so much pride.”
In place of a 20th issue, she sent out an email titled “A note to LA,” which contains a list of resources for those displaced by the wildfires and in need of shelter, food, and supplies, as well as organizations to donate to. During our call, the California native laments, “It’s impossible not to feel the weight of these fires and how devastating they are, and how they’ve affected thousands and thousands of people.” While gathering initiatives to share in her letter, she was moved by the collective outpouring of generosity. “Seeing how the community has come together and done everything and anything they can to help, support, and lift each other up, and get everybody back on track, goes back to what we were just talking a moment ago with family.”
She’s described Beau as a two-way conversation where subscribers are able to reply with their insights, and she personally responds when she can. If in the past she gracefully diffused on-camera interview questions pointed to her love life, on BS, she’s open to them. She mentions her fiancé, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, in multiple letters with glee, and has even dedicated her 17th to a Q&A with him following their engagement. “That was one of the main goals too, to create a space that I feel comfortable and safe to do that,” she intimates. “Because while I value my privacy and our privacy, there are just some things that are too exciting not to share. And I’m grateful to be able to do it on my own terms.”
In part, the excitement from this collaboration comes from being able to connect with her supporters and roots in the Philippines. “I carry my Filipino heritage with so much pride. And I feel like [it’s] deeply rooted in the values that my parents have instilled in both my brother and I: resilience and kindness and a deep sense of family.” As far as familial celebrations go, they look different each year depending on their work schedules. Ultimately, the act of communing together in itself is the tradition they uphold, no matter what that looks like. It’s what keeps all of them, but especially her and her brother, really close.
Griffin, like his sister, wears many hats. He’s an entrepreneur, Nascar driver, drag racer, offroad desert racer, race engine tuner, and part-time movie stuntman. And while their worlds may look different on the surface, he insists on their similarity. They both lean on the support of huge teams to do what they do, they “have to maintain very special mindsets that balance great communication skills to our teams, being relentlessly competitive within ourselves, and staying mentally and physically healthy while doing all of this,” he elaborates. “This can be very tough at times, so we talk nearly every single day about everything you could think about, work related or not.”
And the wheels just keep turning. On top of all her projects, Hailee is adding another one to her lineup: ready-to-drink margaritas. In development for several years with Jordi Zindel and Rodrigo Hernandez of Premium Beers Group, Angel Margarita is crafted with a hundred percent agave tequila blanco sourced and manufactured in Jalisco, Mexico. From the fields to the factories, Hailee carved out time to be involved in product development from the ground up. “It’s generational too, and this is their livelihood,” she observes from the locals working on-site. “It’s so much more than just a drink, right? It’s celebratory, it’s meaningful. It is family, it is community. It is everything that they live for and take pride in. I get to be a part of this bigger story, and that’s what’s so wonderful to me.”
It’s all happening for Hailee, and that’s just the way she likes it. “When I get to look at the calendar and it’s packed with stuff, I find few things more exciting. But I’ve gotten really good at enjoying and appreciating the slower moments in life.” For her, those moments often look like curling up on the couch with her dogs Martini and Brando and her fiancé, and a good episode of Family Feud or Jeopardy. It’s a picture emblematic of where she wants to be, which is finding peace inwardly while blooming further professionally.
“I mean, gosh, it’s only… where are we?” she asks, before answering her own question. “It’s still January. We’ve got the whole year.”
Photographs by GREG SWALES. Styling by ROB ZANGARDI & MARIEL HAENN. Makeup: Ash K Holm. Hair: Gregory Russel. Executive Producer: Anz Hizon. Producer: Alexey Galetskiy. Nails: Tom Bachik. Production Assistants: Ivan Shentalinskiy, Grace Sundarathiti. Photographer’s Assistants: Juliet Lambert, Maya Sacks, Stephen Krajeski. Digital Tech: Toma Kostygina. Stylist’s Assistants: Hannah Margeson, Elliot Soriano. Tailor: Oxana Sumenko. Cinematographer: Chevy Tyler. Management: Maggie Bryant, Caroline Imhoff, Jill Demling. Catering: Haute Chefs. Shot on location at AGP West
