Coen Brothers Cast the Young Heroine in TRUE GRIT

Joel and Ethan Coen have found the the girl who will play the young heroine in their new film True Grit. They auditioned more than 15,000 teenage girls for the part and offered it to 13-year old actress Hailee Steinfeld.

Steinfeld will play Mattie Ross, who is the character that the story revolves around. She joins a fantastic cast of actors that includes Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, and Josh Brolin. 

Casting notes describe the character of Mattie in a bit more depth called her a “simple, tough as nails, young woman in post-Civil War Arkansas. Her unusually steely nerves and straightforward manner are often surprising to those she meets. She possessed plenty of true grit and determination. Enough so that she insists on going with 2 marshals to hunt down the killer of her father.”

Here's a short synopsis for the film which is based on the novel by Charles Portis.

Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross’s father, Frank, was killed by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), one of his own workers for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Mattie heads to Fort Smith to seek justice. There she hires Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a hard-drinking US Marshal, to help her track down Chaney. Meanwhile, a Texas Ranger named La Boeuf (Matt Damon) is also tracking the killer, and he joins Ross and Cogburn, setting an unlikely trio on Chaney’s trail.

True Grit

is scheduled to come out Christmas Day this year, so they're gonna shoot this thing pretty quick.