The Story Behind the Casting of 'True Grit's' Hailee Steinfeld

2:24 PM PST 1/7/2011 by Todd Longwell

With only a few short film and minor TV roles, she beat out 15,000: “Just the thought of it was kind of intimidating,” she tells THR of auditioning.

Legend has it that when John Wayne charged across a meadow at his enemies — reins in teeth and guns a-blazing — as hard-drinking, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn during the iconic climax of 1969’s True Grit, he was saddled upon a moving truck, not a galloping horse. When it came time for Jeff Bridges to mount up for the same scene 41 years later in Joel and Ethan Coen’s new version of True Grit, he made the dangerous ride himself, atop a live horse.