Ariana Greenblatt on Borderlands, Barbie and the 'Double Life' of Teen Stardom (2024)

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Days before her cover shoot with People, Ariana Greenblatt did something that, to the average 16-year-old, would be considered ordinary. She embarked on a “side quest” with her friends — something they do often — and visited the Santa Monica Pier early in the morning. Wearing her pajamas and a pair of sunglasses she purchased on the pier as her disguise, Greenblatt leaned into the kind of carefree “normal” that came before she became a Disney Channel child star at age eight.

Sipping an iced matcha in between takes on a Sunday afternoon in West Hollywood, Greenblatt is focused, though quick to jam out to her hype playlist speckled with Broadway songs. The actress, who boasts 3.6 million followers on TikTok and 3.4 million on Instagram, is still learning to “balance all the changes” as a rising star—but she’s managed to keep her teenage years mostly out of public view. “If I'm in a public setting with a bunch of people, I'm constantly aware,” says Greenblatt, who prefers hanging at friends’ houses or at off-the-radar Los Angeles restaurants. “I've navigated a way to stay as low-key as possible.”

Greenblatt, best known to the over-25 set as America Ferrera’s angsty teen daughter in last summer’s Greta Gerwig-directed blockbuster Barbie, landed her first acting gigs in first grade. Living in Florida at the time, Greenblatt had come close to landing the titular role on Broadway’s Matilda the Musical in a chance audition, and on a subsequent summer trip to Los Angeles with her dad Shon, a marketing executive, and mom Soli, a former professional ballerina, she landed three auditions.

She aced all three, which resulted in two bit parts and a life-changing role as the mischievous Daphne Diaz, the youngest of seven children on Disney’s Stuck in the Middle opposite Jenna Ortega. Greenblatt’s parents scrambled to find housing in L.A. so she could be in the popular show, which reached 27 million viewers after its premiere and ran from 2016 to 2018. Soon, Greenblatt realized there was no looking back: “I just know the second I was consistently on a set, I felt more comfortable than I ever do,” she says. “I knew I never wanted to stop.”

At 16, Greenblatt embodies what Gen Z — and British pop star Charli xcx — would hail as brat. She has a cool-girl demeanor, a signature pout, speaks her truth and embraces the chaos of new adventures. She’s also not afraid to admit she has imperfections. “I compare myself so much to so many people. It literally makes me nauseous,” she says.

Though she effortlessly cycles through Louis Vuitton, Prada and Monse looks at the PEOPLE photo shoot, Greenblatt values “comfort over anything” when she’s off duty and says menswear is a “big slay” — even more so when it’s not from her own closet: “It must be four times my size, and it must not be my clothes. It's either my friend's clothes or my brother's clothes, or my dad's clothes.”

Her family has stayed close as Greenblatt has racked up her big-screen film credits, from 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War to 2021’s In the Heights. Both parents are present at today’s cover shoot, and Soli always accompanies her daughter to film sets. At one point, Greenblatt runs over to give her dad a big hug before pausing to tease: “What are you wearing?”

This easy – and watchful – family dynamic may explain why she seems to have been sheltered from the hazards of child stardom so far. Greenblatt, who is Jewish and Puerto Rican, always felt protected by her parents (and humbled by her older brother Gavin, 20, an aspiring designer).

“I could have a full day of school and then go film Star Wars”—she plays young Ahsoka Tano on Ahsoka—”and no one could know. I have moments where I feel like I'm living a double life, but I never felt like I was thrown to the wolves,” says Greenblatt, who maintained a regular school schedule at a private high school before switching to homeschooling in Fall 2023 for her junior year.

“I wouldn't be who I was if I wasn't close with my family,” she adds. “My brother is my best friend and he knows me better than anybody in this world. He also doesn't put me on any sort of pedestal. If anything, I'm down here,” she says, gesturing to the ground, “which is very refreshing.”

'I Had a Dreamhouse. Now I'm In One.'

With Barbie, something huge was on the horizon—and she didn’t even know it. Greenblatt was 14 when she first walked onto the set of Barbie to play Sasha, the unenthused daughter of America Ferrera’s Gloria. They were filming the blowout sleepover dance scene with Barbies and Kens galore — and Greenblatt was stunned by the cast’s warm embrace: “I was expecting everyone to just gloss over me and I'd have to build up courage to say hi. But instantly Margot [Robbie] came and gave me a hug, and the Kens and the Barbies and America gave me a hug.”

Still no one realized they were filming a future billion-dollar hit, and Greenblatt sat back and took “everything in quietly.” Working with Gerwig, she says, was like having a “very loving, motherly type figure.”

“She had such insane niche references from movies that nobody on that set has seen, which was my favorite thing,” recalls Greenblatt. “So charming. My favorite thing about her, she'd be like, ‘Remember that 1920 [film]...?’ I was like, ‘No, I don't, but I am picking up what you're putting down.’“

Robbie, the “queen bee,” set the tone on set with her positive nature, recalls Greenblatt, who similarly soaked up scenes with Ferrera. “I learned a lot just listening to her…America’s incredible,” she says of the veteran actress, who earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role.

Ferrera recalls being impressed by Greenblatt’s poise, and on a break from filming Barbie in London, the Ugly Betty star invited her onscreen daughter out for their own side quest: “I took her to high tea and we ate our weight in scones and talked for hours,” Ferrera, 40, tells PEOPLE. “She’s an old soul who’s easy to talk to about anything, but she’s also a young woman who is so eager to grow and learn.”

The Barbie bonds remain: Months before news broke that Robbie is expecting her first baby with husband Tom Ackerley, Greenblatt’s mom had a prescient dream about it.

“I was like, ‘Mom, I'm not texting Margot ‘I think you're pregnant.’ She's going to think I'm crazy,” she recalls. When the news went public, she went straight to Soli. “I was like, ‘Mom, Margot's pregnancy came out today.’ And she was like, ‘I called it, I'm a bruja (witch). I can tell the future.’” She gives a dramatic pause. “That happens a lot with her.”

After the film grossed $1.4 billion and became a cultural phenomenon—with the costumed screening parties and discourses on gender and identity to match—Greenblatt grappled with “confusing emotions” of trying to find herself while her star is on the rise.

“I didn't know what was happening. I was like, ‘Why do people know me? I don't know who I am.’ There was so much overwhelming love, and I didn't really know what to do with that or categorize that in my brain, so I just hid for a while,” she says. “I also had no idea it would be accepted the way it was.”

'He's Got My Back'

This weekend, Greenblatt is starring in her biggest role yet, the film adaptation of the insanely popular video game Borderlands (out Aug. 9). Greenblatt joins Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black playing Tiny Tina, a wild tween on the run across the universe with a penchant for swearing and blowing things up. At 13, Greenblatt leaned into the brash role.

“If that movie was rated R, which I pushed for it to be, you'd hear more of my personality,” she says of the PG-13 film. “I swear a lot. And I do the middle finger too much. I have to stop because I've been told to. While I was filming, I just felt so free — like I could say and do whatever and it would work because Tina is that unpredictable feral girl.”

Borderlands, directed by Eli Roth, filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Budapest, Hungary, so the cast had plenty of time to bond. And when she missed her middle school graduation due to filming, the cast threw a party for her — with Tiny Tina’s bunny ears glued to her cap by the props team. It was also on that set that she met two of her best friends: Hart’s kids Heaven, 19, and Hendrix, 16.

“[My kids] were lucky enough to bond with the only other kid there,” says Hart, 45, noting that the trio “ended up spending an astronomical amount of time together, stayed true to their friendship and built off of it. Good people attract good people. I think that’s how they found each other.”

Four years later, Greenblatt remains an honorary Hart family member, dubbing the comedian “Uncle Kevin.” Says Hart jokingly: “She’s around my house all the time. This whole ‘Uncle Kev’ thing pisses me off but she won’t stop doing it.”

Despite their running banter, Greenblatt knows he has her back. “He believes in me so much. Anytime I'm at his house and his friend is there, he's like, ‘This is Ariana. She's the next big thing.’ He just makes me feel really good,” she says. It’s not just talk. “What I really admire most about her is that there’s no fear,” says Hart. “I’m glad we were able to bond and get close but I’m excited to see what she’s gonna bring to the business. More importantly, do for the business.”

'I'm Taking It Day by Day'

Soon entering her senior year, Greenblatt has opted for homeschooling, following what she hints was a less-than-inspiring run at a more standard high school. “I wanted that social interaction and Friday Night Lights and homecoming. Stuff like that has always intrigued me – and I got a taste of it and I never need to see it again.”

But she still has teenage dreams to check off. She doesn’t have her license yet (she’s working on it!) but if she’s ever “down bad in the dumps,” her dad lets her get behind the wheel and they go on an off-the-books drive. She wants to graduate high school and has no plans to attend college — for now. “It's up to my parental figures. But if it were up to me, I would say no,” she says with a smirk, well aware her mom is listening in.

There was a time when Greenblatt wished she had “a bigger friend group” — but now she’s fulfilled by her tight-knit circle. Even when she travels, she prefers a quiet night in: “I feel like the older I get, I definitely get weirdly more introverted and shy.”

As for dating, having a boyfriend isn’t high on Greenblatt’s priority list (her exact words: “Yuck!”), but she’s willing to have some fun if it means doing it for the plot.

“I have no interest in having a boyfriend. Gross. But I'll talk to [someone] for a little bit…Then I'm like, ‘Sorry, I got to go. I'm filming,’ ” she quips. Though yet to experience romantic love, Greenblatt says her friends “fill up my heart more than any teenage boy could.”

These friendships keep Greenblatt afloat when the outside noise gets to be too much. Growing up in the spotlight also comes with navigating the occasional social media trolls, but Greenblatt has learned to draw her own boundaries.

“I know when to turn it off and know when to stop looking,” she says. “But it definitely affects me sometimes. I just let myself feel what I need to feel because there's not really anything I can do about it.”

Greenblatt instead fills her spare time with simple joys like karaoke with her friends, eating sushi with her brother and watching her favorite movies, from Superbad to Fantastic Mr. Fox. She just began filming the heist-thriller Now You See Me 3, joining original cast members Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco, and has dreams of becoming a director one day.

She doesn’t take any of it for granted. “I take every opportunity that I get and [I’m] very grateful for it,” she says. “I never expected any of this to happen, and I don't know what's to come either. I'm just living in the moment.”

But with her 17th birthday looming, the moment still has boundaries. And a curfew. “I'm still a normal girl,” she says. “Usually it's 11:30 p.m… but if I'm awesome, 12.”