By: Abby Shapiro
You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone…
Anna Kendrick, famous singer and American actress, is today celebrating her 31st birthday.
Kendrick has starred in “The Twilight Saga” as Jessica Stanley from 2008-2012; 2009’s “Up in the Air” as Natalie Keener where she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; and the musical comedy, “Pitch Perfect”, playing Beca, a role she is best known for. The song, “Cups,” that she sang in ”Pitch Perfect,” became widely recognized after the movie hit theaters in 2012.
The multi-talented Kendrick was born on August 9, 1985 in Portland, Maine. Although much of Kendrick’s award winnings were in her adult years, she also appeared to be an aspiring young actress showing much potential. At age 12, she received a Tony award for her acting in the Broadway musical High Society. Five years later at age 17, Kendrick starred in the 2003 movie, “Camp.”
Although Kendrick is turning 31 years old this year, 2015 was pretty successful for her. The sequel to the movie she is most well-known for, “Pitch Perfect,” came out in May of 2015. The sequel, according to online movie critics, scored a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, 63% on Metacritic, and a 6.5/10 on IMDb.
Though it might not seem so, Kendrick isn’t all about movies. The song she sang in Pitch Perfect became so popular that it is now the theme song for the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
When Kendrick sang “Cups,” a song using movements of a cup to create a beat, it became one of the most popular songs of that year. “Cups“ is a version of the 1931 Carter Family song “When I’m Gone.” The song was first performed in 2009 by Youtube channelers “Lulu and the Lampshades.” Kendrick then adopted it for the movie, and later decided to make a music video of her singing it.
In an interview with Seth Meyers, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Kendrick explains after the music video what confrontations she’s had with some young girls’ parents. She said, “Girls will come up to me and say, ‘I can do the ‘Cups’ song and I did it at my talent show,’ and then the other thing I get is dads coming up to me and saying, ‘Yeah, my kid does ‘Cups’ — it was cute, at first,'” she said.
Even though Kendrick may have had a difficult time dealing with the criticism from older people about the song, she had a successful year. Hopefully Kendrick will experience age 31 the same way she experienced age 30.
