Anna Kendrick

About

Anna Kendrick is an American actress and singer best known for her supporting roles in a number of feature films, most notably in the Twilight series, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Pitch Perfect.

Acting Career

Kendrick made her stage debut at the age of 12 in August 1998, when she was cast as Dinah in the Broadway musical High Society, for which she was honored with the Theatre World Award and nominated for a Tony Award. A few years later, Kendrick made her film debut in the 2003 musical comedy Camp^[1] and subsequently landed a recurring minor character role in the Twilight films as one of the female protagonist’s school mates. In 2010, she was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in Up in the Air (2009).^[2] She gained popularity, especially online, for her staring role in the musical comedy Pitch Perfect (2012). She will appear as Cinderella in the 2014 film adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical Into the Woods.

Online History

On Twitter

As of January 2014 Kendrick’s Twitter account^[4] has over 2.05 million followers. Her funny tweets and interactions with fellow celebrities on Twitter are often reported on. On August 9th, 2013, The Huffington Post^[5] published a piece titled “28 Great Tweets From Anna Kendrick In Celebration Of The Actress’ 28th Birthday,” and on January 7th, 2014, Buzzfeed^[6] published a post titled “25 Times Anna Kendrick Was Painfully Accurate” which also compiled her best tweets.

Cups

On April 12, 2013, the AnnaKendrickVEVO YouTube channel^[11] uploaded a music video for Kendrick’s single version of “Cups,” a song she sang in the movie Pitch Perfect. As of January 2014 the video has over 105.7 million views.

The music video sparked a trend of creating tutorials for the cup tapping aspect of the song, with popular YouTubers like Grace Helbig (right) and Glozell (left) making tutorials as well.^[12]

Multiple covers of “Cups” have gone viral including a tap dancer version (top left), an Irish language version (top right), an a capella version (bottom left) and kids version (bottom right)

Super Bowl Comercial

On January 28th, 2014, Heineken unveiled its Super Bowl commercial for the Newcastle Brown Ale featuring the actress via the company’s YouTube channel.^[7] The commercial opens with Kendrick explaining that she had been hired by the beer company to do a Super Bowl ad, but after mentioning that they ran out of money, she quickly digresses into a rant-like, bleep-ridden monologue. Within 72 hours of release, the Newcastle ad gained over 2.6 million views and many viral media and news sites such as Buzzfeed^[8], Variety^[9] and Adweek^[10] reported on its success.