Why Margaret From The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things Looks So Familiar

There are few commodities valued more highly in Hollywood than talented young actors. If you've been paying attention for the past couple of years, you likely already know the star of Amazon Studios' new fantasy film The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is very much one of those breakout talents. If not, the actor's new film is just as likely to put her face on your radar. 

It's already earning glowing reviews, as evidenced by its impressive 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The actor's name is Kathryn Newton, and the new film finds her portraying a teen named Margaret who's trapped living the same day over and over with a young man named Mark (Kyle Allen). It also finds the pair using that Groundhog Day-ish existence to mark up the titular map of things and places that mean the most to them. And yeah, they of course fall in love in the process.  

As it is, many of The Map of Tiny Perfect Things' glowing reviews also praise the film's young stars for bringing the heat and the pathos to a narrative that might seem a touch redundant to cinema diehards (a la 2020's marvelous Palm Springs). Either way, the film will only bolster Kathryn Newton's growing "it girl" status. If you're still having trouble placing her face, here's why Margaret from The Map of Tiny Perfect Things looks so familiar. 

If you do happen to recognize Kathryn Newton's face, we're sincerely hoping it's from her show-stopping turn in 2020's body-swap horror flick Freaky. Of course, given the way 2020 unfolded across the globe, most movies from that epoch probably qualify as either overlooked or under-seen, so one might reasonably be forgiven for missing out on Freaky during its brief theatrical run. That being said, Freaky (directed by Happy Death Day mastermind Christopher Landon) is now available to rent and watch from the comfort of your very own home, so there are no more excuses not to buy the ticket and take the ride.

Genre fans really do need to take that ride, since Freaky lives up to its title and then some with Newton portraying a high schooler who swaps bodies with a deranged serial killer (Vince Vaughn in a way out-there performance), only to discover that if she can't undo the change within 24 hours, it will become permanent. What follows is a bloody, gender and genre-bending slasher romp that will warm the heart and make you laugh out loud even as the body count rises and the blood-spatter rains over the landscape. 

And yes, Freaky also features arguably career-best work from both Newton and Vaughn who spend the bulk of the action inhabiting each others skins and personalities to truly wondrous effect. 

Cinematic brilliance aside, Freaky is also admittedly not a film suited to everyone's tastes. If you did skip that one, you might still recognize Kathryn Newton's face from a teen flick cut from a decidedly different cloth, the raunchy 2018 comedy Blockers. It might be a little misleading to label Blockers a "teen flick" though, as the film is largely centered on three parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) who go to absurd, embarrassing, and frequently hilarious lengths to try and stop their teen daughters from going through with one of those time-honored pacts to lose their virginity on the night of their senior prom.

As that setup conveys, Mann, Cena, and Barinholtz really are the focal point for much of Blockers' narrative, with each carrying the dramatic weight of their roles as gracefully as they do the comedic. That's not to say the girls don't more than pull their weight along the way with Kathryn Newton (as Julie), Gideon Adlon (as Sam), and Geraldine Viswanathan (as Kayla) bringing just the right amount of cocksure bravado and teen naivete to their roles. Somewhere in the mix, Blockers manages to achieve something most unique in the realm of teen cinema by delivering a funny, incisive, and endearingly tender-hearted coming-of-age tale that deftly explores growing up from the perspectives of both the kids and the adults. As it happens, the film also finds Kathryn Newton and her stalwart crew painting as honest a portrait of the not-so-clueless teen life as has ever been committed to film.  

It's unlikely, but it is possible you've yet to catch Kathryn Newton in any of her big-screen roles. Even if that's the case, you may yet recognize her from winning small screen turns in lauded series like AMC's Halt and Catch Fire or HBO's Big Little Lies. For fans of The CW's recently concluded genre hit Supernatural, Kathryn Newton will need no introduction as the actor made several appearances on the series between seasons 10 and 15. She did so as Claire Novak, a young hunter who happens to be the daughter of Misha Collins' Jimmy Novak (himself the true vessel of Castiel). In turn, Claire understandably had a few notable encounters with the brothers Winchester in her time on the show. 

Newton didn't make her first appearance as Claire until season 10, but the actor more than put her stamp on the then-teenage version of the character, helping transform her into one of Supernatural's more wonderfully complicated supporting roles. Given the trajectory of her career since, it may have been a good thing that her spinoff pilot never got off the ground, and with a prime role in the MCU's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ahead, the future is obviously more than bright for Kathryn Newton.