The Big Picture

Maika Monroe transitioned from professional kiteboarding to acting after a serious accident led her to choose one passion over another.
Monroe’s breakout role in
It Follows
solidified her as a modern-day Scream Queen, impressing the horror community with her performance.
Monroe’s upcoming film
Longlegs
stars her as an FBI agent investigating a serial killer case intertwined with disturbing occult practices.

These days she might be running away from shape-shifting entities and running into dangerous situations to stop a serial killer dead in his tracks but back in the day, Maika Monroe wasn’t so much into running as she was gliding across the water as an avid kiteboarder. A California native, Monroe grew up on the water, obsessed with the competitive sport. She was so talented that, prior to pursuing her passion for acting, Monroe was well on her way to a career in kiteboarding. During a conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff in a recent installment of Collider Ladies Night, Monroe shared the moment that she was forced to pick between her two passions and how everything worked out.

Recalling the moment that she traded in sport for film, Monroe said,

“It was probably when I had a really terrible accident kiteboarding.
I cracked my head open
. I’m fine. All is well. But when you do any sport, and at that time I was doing it professionally, you need to give it your all. You need to give it 100%, and at that time, I couldn’t. It was just a wake-up call, where it’s like, ‘Okay, you’ve got to make a decision. You can’t be getting pulled in both these different directions.’
Acting was like this visceral feel
. There wasn’t really, at that moment, a debate, like, ‘Oh, which should I choose?’ It was just like, ‘This is what I need to follow,’ and here I am.”

Maika Monroe’s Trajectory To Fame

After deviating from one career path to follow another, Monroe landed her first major role in Hollywood in Ramin Bahrani’s drama flick, At Any Price. While the movie may not have made the box office splash that it was hoping for, it was enough to get the up-and-coming actress’s foot in the door. From there, she wound up earning places on the call sheets in productions like The Bling Ring and Labor Day, and by 2014, Monroe nabbed the movie that would put her on the map as a modern-day Scream Queen.

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows was a horror movie that broke away from the standard mold that many had come to expect from the genre. Combining a terrifying storyline about a supernatural entity that stalks from person to person and killer performances from Monroe and her co-stars, the movie was an immediate hit for the horror community. And, if there’s one thing that you should know about the horror community, it’s that when a new star does right by us, we’ll support them through thick and thin.

In the years between It Follows and her upcoming production, Longlegs, Monroe has appeared in multiple films spanning different genres, and those of us who love her for her spooky scary skills have backed her every step of the way. Check out Nemiroff’s full interview with Monroe below:

Longlegs A chilling horror thriller directed by Osgood Perkins. The film stars Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, a promising new FBI agent assigned to solve the mystery of an elusive serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. As Harker delves deeper into the case, she uncovers disturbing evidence of occult practices connected to the murders.Release Date July 12, 2024 Cast Maika Monroe , Nicholas Cage , Alicia Witt , Blair Underwood Runtime 101 Minutes Studio(s) C2 Motion Picture Group , Saturn Films Distributor(s) Neon Expand

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