Anna Kendrick has been working in Hollywood for two decades, and she has learned that making movies has made her overthink when sitting down to watch a film. Having starred in film series such as the Twilight Saga and Pitch Perfect, Kendrick has also provided voice roles in Trolls and its sequel Trolls World Tour and is currently starring in the drama Alice, Darling. While recently speaking with First We Feast, the actress says that her experience in the business has changed the way she watches movies, and not necessarily for the better. She said:

"I think that when you start making movies, there's a period where they're kind of ruined for you, because you're just thinking of behind the scenes and how the sausage gets made of it all, and now, I feel like it's just sort of second nature that's a running script in the back of my head. So when a movie is really bad, it's so much worse, because I can see like, 'Why that choice? It would have been so easy to do this or whatever.' And when it's good, the running script is not just like, 'I'm immersed and it's great.' There's a running thing in the background like, 'Oh, my God, every department just nailed it.' I kind of get this bonus appreciation for all these people who came together and made this thing."

Related: Alice, Darling Review: Emotional Drama Struggles with Pacing

Anna Kendrick Called Working on Alice, Darling a 'Therapeutic' Experience

Anna Kendrick Alice Darling
Lionsgate

Having suffered emotional and psychological abuse in a past relationship, Anna Kendrick said that filming her new movie Alice, Darling was something that became a cathartic experience for the actress, and it allowed her to put much of her own story into the movie. She said of working on the film:

"I was coming out of a personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse. [My rep] knew what I'd been dealing with and sent it along. Because he was like, 'This sort of speaks to everything that you've been talking to me about.' It felt really distinct in that I had, frankly, seen a lot of movies about abusive or toxic relationships, and it didn't really look like what was happening to me. It kind of helped me normalize and minimize what was happening to me, because I thought, 'Well, if I was in an abusive relationship, it would look like that.' But like so many things in life. I think the piece that was most therapeutic was actually building relationships with these collaborators and sharing our personal histories with each other, and then creating this thing together."

As well as her role in Alice, Darling, which has seen the actress receiving high praise from critics, Kendrick will soon be making her directorial debut with The Dating Game, a movie about killer Rodney Alcala who appeared on a dating show in 1978 despite being in the middle of a murder spree at the time. The film is currently casting and is expected to be released in 2024.