No, Ever Anderson is not an alien, but there is something extraterrestrial about her—this being of love and light, this ball of energy virtually combusting with talent. With her magnetic charisma and hypnotic charm, the 16-year-old shapeshifter—an actor who already has three major movie credits to her name, including the titular role in Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy—comes to FLAUNT in peace. Having last touched down on its cover four years ago, Anderson is quite the picture of transformation.

Ruminating on her metamorphosis, Anderson says, “I think I’ve changed a lot since the last [FLAUNT] cover. For one, I feel like a young adult now. I’m working and traveling on my own.”

Not one to stay tethered to a single place, the teenage Anderson has returned to her Hollywood home in Los Angeles after a shoot in New York City, and earlier this summer, she went on a girls’ trip to London.With her long brunette hair, which was a faded blue color the last time she paid us a visit, it’s clear that Anderson is no longer Wendy Darling—the girl who didn’t want to grow up. In fact, Anderson did grow up. “I’ve even graduated high school!” she bubbles. “It’s crazy how time flies.”

Securing her degree a year and a half early, Anderson says she’s now excited to pursue acting projects that she couldn’t otherwise take on. But, that doesn’t mean she skipped past her childhood in the process: algebra and chemistry were beasts she had to tackle just like every other kid. She still has a year of AP courses ahead, and, yes, she did fall victim to cottage core in 2021. (She still loves it, by the way: “This TikToker, her username is Meghan Soigné...She has these beautiful cottage core princess dresses. I’m obsessed.”)

Anderson, whose parents are sci-fi action star Milla Jovovich and video-game-to-movie filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson (best known for their collaboration in the Resident Evil franchise, which was based off Capcom’s horror game of the same name), decidedly steps into her Hollywood lineage. But, like any natural- born voyager, she roves headfirst—and heart open—into new spaces, diverging from the path mapped out for her. “I think I forged my ambition on my own,” she says.

For a transient like Anderson, forging her ambitions means expanding her expertise. A polyglot who has a working knowledge of Japanese, Anderson is also fluent in English, Russian and French. Combined with her black belt in taekwondo, Anderson’s Russian fluency served her well as young Natasha Romanoff in Marvel’s 2021 Black Widow. Alongside Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, and David Harbour, Anderson’s portrayal of the Russian assassin pioneered the backstory of one of Marvel’s most beloved Avengers. Sporting blue hair for the role, she filmed some of her scenes in Cuba without the help of a stunt double—a testament to her fascination with the art of world building.

Anderson did the same thing for Peter Pan & Wendy, going as far as Newfoundland to shoot, taking fencing lessons, doing wire work training for her flying scenes, and mimicking her father’s British accent to truly nail her rendition of Wendy.

Ahead of her starring role in Deering Regan’s Mister Werewolf, which is set to begin production early next year, Anderson is once again prepared to venture into the uncharted. Regan, whose true-crime thriller film Skincare tapped Elizabeth Banks as its leading lady this summer, steps into the director’s chair and teams up with Skincare co-writer Sam Freilich for the project. While details of the film are tightly under wraps, Anderson hints, “Mister Werewolf, in my opinion, is a coming-of- age film more than a thriller, but it has those thrilling aspects. I’m in love with the script, and I relate so much to [my] character.” Playfully, she teases, “It’s very different from my other projects. I’m really excited about it.”

Deviating from her previous work—parts in massive IP franchises like Disney and Marvel—means Anderson needs to look inwards like she’s never done before. Yet, naturally inquisitive, she says that reading helps catalyze her curiosity, with classics challenging her to prod at her very personhood, the things that make her insides prickle. “Once I began reading classic literature, my thought process, humor and writing style changed so much. I was reading books like Tropic of Cancer and Crime and Punishment at 13, which is crazy to think about now when I reread them, but I’m really happy I did,” she says. “Because, once I started down my ‘classic’ literature journey, my confidence just tripled.”

We reflect on the art of acting, then, with a quote from one of her favorites, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it, novelist Oscar Wilde writes, “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” A fan of classics myself, I wonder what she makes of this. “That’s a hard question,” she determines. “I think there is a gentle balance. Sometimes you need your emotions to take over, but most of the time you should be in control. That’s how it is in my case anyway, but I’m figuring out how to keep that balance.” In a way, acting is her own form of portal-hopping, each role transporting her to both somewhere and someone new.

But, she finds outlets in other ways, too. The young actor portal hops through her hobbies, the various sidequests for knowledge that so deeply penetrate her life. With her nose usually in a book and thumbs scrolling through TikTok, Anderson finds that she slips into dream worlds more often than not. “Oh, for sure I’m more interested in fantasy worlds,” she decides. “I feel much more alien on Earth. Because, think about it like this: in a fantasy world, you have monsters, dragons, fairies, vampires, mermaids, etc...but in our world you have none of that.” Isn’t she afraid of these creatures, though, even a little bit? No—for Anderson, outlandish realms are enthralling. “The closest you might get to a fantasy vehicle is a Cybertruck. Honestly, I’d rate our world two stars, just for the good graphics,” she laughs.

Whether it’s hopping through the Yorkshire Moors in the pages of Wuthering Heights, battling along the Sword Coast in Baldur’s Gate 3 (a Dungeons & Dragons video game), or dancing to Kate Bush in the 1980s, Anderson feels most comfortable when she can escape. I brood that it can be overwhelming to stand at the intersection of so many places. Sure, Anderson says, but without her portals—her niche pockets of interest—she’d practically burst at the seams. “I just have a lot of energy and love to give,” she says, “and honestly I go crazy if I’m not doing a bunch of things. I want to know as much as I can and do as much as I can.” Luckily for Anderson, a Gen Z actor who came of age during the pandemic, she’s able to obtain knowledge in ways the actors who came before her couldn’t.

After all, her childhood was practically built on the cross-streets of the internet, and with unprecedented virtual access to any corner of the world, Anderson joins other members of Gen Z as arguably the most educated generation to date. Hence, Anderson’s worldview is split by even more avenues to follow and explore, and while some older users are pessimistic (well, we can’t exactly escape trends like “sigma” and “very demure”) Anderson remains sanguine. She grabs the gears of her life and plays it, because at any rate, life is a lot more like a video game than a movie.

“[We’re all] leveling up in skills and walking around aimlessly staring at the wall like in The Sims,” she concludes, which means drifting between levels is perhaps the most beautiful aspect of all. So, in the video game of her life, Anderson says she’s “definitely almost on level 17,” which looks an awful lot like a choose-your-own-adventure. And right now, Anderson is choosing to yoke a narrative of her own. Aside from acting, she’s the muse of Miu Miu, Daisy by Marc Jacobs, and now, Celine’s first-ever lipstick: “Working with Celine has been a dream come true, and I’m so excited for other girls to wear Celine Rouge Triomphe and feel just as confident and free as I did wearing it.” She also has a self-written dark comedic short in the works, which she will act in and direct. “I’ve been working on it for a while. I still change it often, but I started it early in the summer, and I’m the most excited to just start filming,” she discloses.

Regardless of how far she’s willing to go in her ambitions, even hoping to relocate to London or Paris and pursue a business degree, Anderson recognizes that she can’t go far without having a mothership to return to. Recalling the treasures of her girlhood, Anderson’s memories shine and pulse like secret trinkets that keep her grounded. In her open palms lie moments spent making snack boards for family movie nights, listening to “Grace” by Jeff Buckley, crafting, baking, crying to The Little Unicorn and reading with her grandma. The eldest sister in a family of three girls, Anderson meditates, “My family keeps me grounded and also encourages me to follow my dreams.”

As she twirls along the brink of adulthood, Anderson is looking forward to wandering down alleys that she’s never seen before, collecting more tokens along the way. And while she’s scared of paying utilities “and not having my mom yell at me to clean my room,” she’s excited for everything else independence has to offer. “I hope from here, I keep going,” she says.

Here on Earth, Anderson is an actor, a daughter, and a sister. But lest we forget, in her wonderland, Anderson is a being that relishes in the anomalous. In her words, she’s “a strange brain growth, not like a tumor, [but] more like a pathway that can lead you to weird food combos, a hunger to read everything, and manic urges to paint and craft.” Sporadic and bustling with an audacious spirit to see what’s out there, Anderson, in her youth and casual joie de vivre, understands what most of us humans don’t: to live is to learn.

In her kinetic state, Anderson isn’t just peeking through portals. Instead, she’s valiantly thrusting her foot into any door that will open for her. And regardless of what she finds, she will, as Ever Anderson does, tilt her head and wave, nodding in peace and taking the hand of whatever strangeness nestles its face against her glass. 

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Photographed by Matthew Brookes at 2b Management

Styled by Christopher Campbell

Written by Julia Zara

Hair: Candice Birns at A-Frame Agency

Makeup: Sabrina Bedrani at The Wall Group

Flaunt Film DP: Jonathan Ho

Flaunt Film Editor: Isaac Dektor

Sound Design: Lucas Doya

Digi Tech: Stowe Richards

Photo Assistants: Andrew Arboleta and Arden Core.

Location: Studios 60

Talent Management: Chris Brenner at Untitled Entertainment