A child actor who played girls with more sense than the adults around them, and an adult who has settled into quieter parts: clerks, friends, the one at the table who knows where the paperwork is kept. We have seen too little of her lately.
Fi1m perspective
The best scene in Rebel Ridge (2024) is two people reading statutes across a table. Aaron Pierre's Terry needs to know what the police can legally do to him, and AnnaSophia Robb's Summer McBride, a courthouse clerk with her own reasons to distrust the department, knows where the paperwork is kept. Nobody shouts. Jeremy Saulnier's film is coiled tight for an hour and then sits down to explain itself, and Robb is the one thing in it that gives off any warmth. We noticed, some way into the second half, that we were waiting for the film to go back to that table, and that is not usually what one waits for in a thriller.
She has been doing a version of this since she was a child. Scouted at eight, she was Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and then Leslie Burke in Bridge to Terabithia (2007), the imaginative outsider at the heart of a widely liked adaptation. Critics at the time noticed how little sentiment she brought to it, which is rarer in a child than it sounds. Soul Surfer (2011), in which she played the surfer Bethany Hamilton, and two seasons as Carrie Bradshaw in The Carrie Diaries (2013–14) kept her in front of a young audience through her teens.
Then she went to university, graduated in 2018, and came back smaller. The parts since have been in ensembles and limited series: The Act (2019), Little Fires Everywhere (2020), Dr. Death (2021), and now Saulnier. She has said she does not mind a modest role if there is something in it to bite into, and the work bears that out. She turns up as the friend, the clerk, the person who has read the file. It suits her. She is unhurried on screen, and she listens, which is a talent directors of louder films tend not to ask for.
The caveat is that we have reviewed only one of these, and in it she is a supporting player. We cannot yet tell you whether the grounded child became a grounded lead, because nobody has recently asked her to carry a film on her own. I Play Rocky (2026), in which she plays Sasha Czack for Peter Farrelly, is another featured part in someone else's story.
That is not a complaint about her. It is a note to the people casting. Somebody should hand her a lead again and pair her with a director who, like Saulnier, does not need the volume up. Until then, look for her at the table; she is usually the one worth watching.
Biography
AnnaSophia Robb is an American actress, model and singer. Born on 8 December 1993 in Denver, Colorado, she began her career as a child actress. Her early film roles include India Opal Buloni in Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
Robb is also known for playing Leslie Burke in Bridge to Terabithia (2007), Sara in Race to Witch Mountain (2009) and Bethany Hamilton in Soul Surfer (2011). On television she portrayed Carrie Bradshaw in The Carrie Diaries (2013–2014), and has appeared in Mercy Street (2016–2017), The Act (2019) and Little Fires Everywhere (2020). She played Sasha Czack in the 2026 film I Play Rocky. Robb graduated from New York University in 2018 and married Trevor Paul in 2022.
