Meet 16-year-old Julia Butters, who stars in Freakier Friday with Lindsay Lohan

Julia Butters is only 16, but she has already built a Hollywood résumé any actor would envy. With experience working with Quentin Tarantino, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, Butters is now stepping into her first main character role as Harper Coleman in Freakier Friday alongside Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Chad Michael Murray. Butters made her acting debut in 2014 with an appearance in TV crime show Criminal Minds and delivered a noteworthy performance in her portrayal of Anna-Kat Otto, the sweet but anxious daughter in the sitcom American Housewife. Butters then got her breakout moment with a role in Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – a project that earned her a ticket to the Oscars, where she made headlines for bringing a turkey sandwich in her designer bag. Here’s what you need to know about Butters, one of Hollywood’s most promising young actresses. She didn’t know who Leonardo DiCaprio was before she worked with him When Butters filmed Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, she was only 10 – far too young to have seen any Tarantino films or recognise her A-list co-stars. In fact, at the premiere of her own movie, she had to leave during some age-inappropriate scenes. During her audition for the part of Trudi Fraser, Tarantino handed her all 21 pages of the scene and gave her an overview of the character. When he mentioned writing the script, the young actress responded with charming candour: “Oh, you wrote it? Well done,” she recalled in an interview with Esquire. She was cast in The Fabelmans on her 12th birthday Few receive birthday gifts as memorable as Butters did when she turned 12. In April 2021, Butters answered a call from her idol, Steven Spielberg. The director wished her a happy birthday and offered her the role of Reggie Fabelman, the character inspired by his real-life sister Anne, in his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans. Her admiration for Spielberg only deepened after working with him. “Even though everyone wanted to talk to him and everyone was excited to see him, he made time for everyone,” she told Who What Wear. “I think that was so inspiring because it’s very hard to be present when everyone is calling your name and you don’t know how they know your name.” She wants to get behind the camera, too Butters’ love for film goes well beyond running lines and hitting her marks. Long before working with Spielberg, she was already asking her friends to make movies with her, including a remake of Jaws, the movie that made her fall in love with the director and the art of filmmaking. “I would make my own Jaws movie with my underwater camera and friends. We would go into a public swimming pool and make fools out of ourselves screaming in the water and pretending to get eaten by a shark, and then I would edit it in iMovie,” she shared with Who What Wear. Butters already envisions herself directing movies in the future and says she has started working on scripts. Recognising the budding passion, Tarantino once organised a private reading of one of her short scripts with the cast of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. She loves drawing, just like her father Away from the spotlight, Butters enjoys drawing – an interest she likely inherited from her father, Darrin Butters, an illustrator and animator who has worked on Disney hits Frozen, Tangled and Moana. Her artistic flair has even made its way onto the red carpet. Butters helped design the dress for her first-ever Oscars appearance. According to Vogue, Butters sent designer Christian Siriano a sketch of what she wanted her dress to look like. With her idea in mind, Siriano went on to design the glittery, ruffled pink dress – complete with a matching bedazzled bag – to carry that turkey sandwich.

Meet 16-year-old Julia Butters, who stars in Freakier Friday with Lindsay Lohan

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}One of Hollywood’s most promising young actresses, Butters has already worked with Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio

One of Hollywood’s most promising young actresses, Butters has already worked with Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio