Imagining a thirteen-year-old girl sitting down to complete a math worksheet after mastering Coen Brothers dialogue in the dust and heat of New Mexico on the rough film sets of True Grit is almost disorienting. However, Hailee Steinfeld‘s early schooling was essentially like that. Not glitzy. Unusual. Quietly, obstinately real.
Before her family moved to Thousand Oaks, California, Steinfeld was raised in Agoura Hills after being born in Tarzana, Los Angeles, in December 1996. For a child growing up in a suburban area of Southern California, her educational experiences at Ascension Lutheran School, Conejo Elementary, and Colina Middle School were rather typical. However, the conventional school schedule just didn’t make sense by 2008, when she was eleven years old and her acting career was starting to take shape in short films and audition rooms. After being pulled out of formal education, she started homeschooling, which she continued until June 2015, when she graduated from high school.
We should take a moment to consider that timeline. Homeschooling for seven years. Seven years of self-pacing, tutoring, and learning in hotel rooms, trailers, and free time in between takes. She also got a Miu Miu campaign, started a music career, co-starred in a big studio franchise, and was nominated for an Academy Award during those same seven years. Regardless of how the homeschooling arrangement actually worked, it was obviously not getting in the way.
There is a propensity to believe that child stars who do not attend traditional schooling are somehow underprivileged—that the lack of hallways, lockers, and Friday quizzes creates irreversible gaps. Perhaps it does occasionally. For Hailee, however, the building appears to have been modified rather than abandoned. Even though her physical location was not fixed, tutors made sure that her education kept up with her peers by aligning her curriculum with state academic standards. Discipline of that nature is not innate. Someone cared enough to make it work, most likely multiple people.
It’s interesting that she hasn’t talked much about the academic aspect of it, maybe because there wasn’t a compelling narrative to share. She studied. She received her degree. She went on. That quiet completion of schooling feels, in its own way, like a noteworthy accomplishment in the entertainment industry, where many young careers engulf everything else.
Even though it’s difficult to pinpoint, the impact of that education is evident in her work. Her performance in The Edge of Seventeen, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2016, required a level of verbal accuracy and emotional literacy that goes beyond simple skill. Understanding character psychology, deciphering dialogue for subtext, and relating one’s own experience to another’s fictional crisis are all abilities that education, in whatever form it takes, fosters. Her ability to give intricate, multi-layered performances in a wide range of genres points to someone who has actually engaged with concepts rather than merely memorized lines.
Additionally, there’s a sharpness to the way she presents herself in public—in interviews, in her music, and in the way she expresses her viewpoint—that suggests she wasn’t just coasting through her studies in between film commitments. It’s difficult to determine whether that stems from the flexibility of homeschooling, intellectual curiosity, or just paying close attention to her surroundings. Most likely, all three.
Her journey truly serves as an example of how education is multifaceted. Most people find success with the classroom version. It was messier, more portable, and less predictable for Hailee Steinfeld, but it still worked. She received her degree. She continued to learn. Furthermore, she never seemed to allow one goal to overshadow the other.
