New York native Alexandra Daddario has been acting from a young age. As a kid she relished acting lessons and took full advantage of her city, seeing Broadway musicals like LES MISÉRABLES and dreaming of appearing in them. She got her break at age 16, when she was cast to play Laurie Lewis on the hit soap opera ALL MY CHILDREN. After a run of 43 episodes, Daddario graduated to the big screen, taking a role in Noah Baumbach’s 2005 indie THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. In 2006 she was picked by director and star Ethan Hawke for a role in his film THE HOTTEST STATE, before returning to television to play roles on shows like DAMAGES, LIFE ON MARS, WHITE COLLAR and PARENTHOOD.

She’s unquestionably best known to fans for her role in 2010’s blockbuster PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF. As Annabeth, daughter of Athena, she meets Percy at Camp Half-Blood and the pair spark a fierce competitiveness that turns into respect and friendship when she’s charged to join him on his quest to find the lightning thief.

She reprises her role in PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS, starring alongside series lead Logan Lerman.  When the safety of Camp Half-Blood is threatened, she and Percy, along with Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and Percy’s newly-discovered half-brother Tyson (Douglas Smith), must set out on their next quest, to retrieve the golden fleece whose power can restore the camp’s perimeter defences.

How has Annabeth developed since the first movie?

Well, I’m blond in this one, so I’m entirely more like the book character physically, and I think it’s more of an emotional journey on this film. She has a character that she’s tied to very emotionally that she is trying to save and I think that the journey is a very difficult and emotional one for her, more so than in the first film.

Why did her hair change colour?

I think everyone was really interested in listening to the fans and making her more like she is in the books. Everyone has that vision in their heads of her. And I was actually very excited to go blonde. I’m probably slightly different than what some people imagined anyway because everyone imagined something different, but I think being blonde just made it that much closer to the character and it was also really fun being blonde because I’ve always wanted to be. I think that this movie, you know, we have a different director and it stands on its own as much as it is a continuation.

Were you always confident that there was going to be a sequel?

I was, I guess you could say, hopefully confident. I love the books and I think they’re such a huge hit. The first movie made a huge difference in my career, I think, and I really was excited about being part of another one. I’m very glad that they made another one. I saw the first 35 minutes of action sequences, and I just I really wanted to see the rest of the movie. I thought it was really well-paced and exciting. It’s a fun family movie, so I’m really excited to be a part of it.

What’s the difference between directors Chris Columbus and Thor Freudenthal?

When I first got the movie working with Chris Columbus, he was just such a huge, well-known director. He’s been around forever and the movie was this huge, epic thing. I had never been on a set like that before, and being one of the leads in a movie like that was mind-blowing. This time around, it was really exciting being able to work with Thor, because he has a different style and a different vision for what the movie’s going to be. It was almost like making a different movie but with the same character.

When did you decide you wanted to be an actress?

When I was a kid, I went to a lot of different lessons growing up and one of the lessons I went to were acting lessons. I used to watch a lot of Broadway plays growing up in New York. I think I saw LES MISERABLES on Broadway like 12 times and I wanted to be Cosette. I wanted to be on the stage and I would choreograph dances to the songs and I knew the whole soundtrack. Also Disney movies like THE LITTLE MERMAID and things like that. It really started with musicals. I wanted to sing. I didn’t audition for the movie though!

Can you sing?

That’s the problem! [laughs] I can carry a tune but I’m not one of the world’s greatest singers. But that’s originally how I got started. I wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be in a musical and I wanted to be on a stage, and it ended up translating to auditioning. I got more and more work and I found the same enjoyment from acting.

What do you love about acting?

I’m constantly, endlessly fascinated by who people are and why they do the things that they do. I love exploring and finding a way to explain to people how I feel about life and I think that the best way I can do that is through acting. That’s what I’ve always gravitated to and with the stories that we tell as actors you can humanize and explain something through a different character. That’s one of the beautiful things about acting. Someone can walk out of a movie and think, “You know what? I really learned something from that character.”

You get to work with some great names on PERCY JACKSON: Nathan Fillion, Stanley Tucci…

They’re both hysterical and really, really nice guys. I had a great time working with Nathan. He was only in for a couple weeks I think but everyone loves Nathan Fillion and he really lives up to that reputation. He’s just a really nice, funny friendly guy. He did a great job. Stanley, we were doing rehearsal just for camera and he went in and did the speech just sort of rehearsing it, but he did it full-on and he was ad-libbing a little bit and just hysterical. We had all these extras and we were all just cracking up and he kept a straight face the whole time and that was just a part of… he’s just a fantastic actor.

How do you get on with Logan? Is it nice to be back with him?

He’s a great guy. We shot in New Orleans in an abandoned Six Flags theme park. It was muddy, and they had taken out all these alligators or crocodiles that had been in there, but there were armadillos that were walking around, and snakes, and it was really one of those situations where all you can do is just laugh. So Logan and I were sitting there, in the mud, tied up to posts, and bugs crawling on us, and it was just one of these things where you either cry or laugh. I think we just started hysterically laughing at the situation and finding the lightness in the ridiculousness of it. Logan’s a great actor and he’s so great to work with. That’s one of the things about all the people we worked with on PERCY JACKSON: everyone is really serious minded when it comes to their jobs but also they have a great sense of humor in order to lighten it when things are very serious and the hours are long and that kind of thing.

How does it feel to watch the film after all the effects are put in? Do you watch your performance?

I do. I find that I learn a lot from that, and not just about myself but also about filmmaking. But it’s a totally bizarre thing. I remember my mom saying after the premiere of the first movie that she couldn’t believe how convincing it was that I was part of this world. You know that you shot the movie and did all this stuff, and then you just can’t believe it’s all put together and everyone’s been staring at your face and putting in fake monsters and all that stuff. It’s a pretty cool thing.

Is that where you go, “I’m a movie star”?

Yeah, I mean, I don’t get carried away! [laughs] But you do sort of think, Wow, I’m really in a movie. It’s a really exciting thing because not a lot of actors get the chance to do movies of this size and with this kind of green screen and CGI.

Why do you think the first movie resonated with people all over the world?

The books have a very popular following and I think for the same reason that people like the books they like the movies. It’s about kids that are flawed in some way and ultimately they are still able to succeed at things and conquer great obstacles and overcome hurdles. It’s a little bit of a metaphor, some of these quests. Kids identify and relate to those kinds of things. We all have problems growing up. Fights in families, this and that, or you could have ADHD, dyslexia, all the things that are talked about in PERCY JACKSON, but you can still do whatever you want to do and it still makes you special and I think that’s the message that everybody relates to and can learn from.

Does that make playing Annabeth a real responsibility, then? You have to make her believable.

Yeah, she has to be a real human. No one is just pure evil or pure good, or pure this or pure that. If you’re playing a dynamic character, you’re a combination of all different kinds of things. She’s really tough and she can be really strong and mean, but she’s also really vulnerable and sweet and loving. It is very fun to find out what makes her tick, why she is the way she is, why she’s sad about this. I think especially in this movie more so than the first. It’s very close to her heart what she’s going to go save. It’s personal this time.