At 13, 'Book Thief' Star Picks The Screen Over The Balance Beam
At 13, Sophie Nelisse is already making big career decisions. She started training to be a gymnast at the age of 3 and has long had dreams to represent Canada in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
"If you want to train at a national, international level, you have about [one] week of break per year," Nelisse tells host Arun Rath. "So I was training about six hours per day."
She put that part of her life aside when she was given another opportunity of a lifetime: to play the lead in the film The Book Thief.
"It was acting or gymnastics," she says. "It was a hard choice, but I chose acting."
She stars as Liesel — a young German girl taken in by a couple, played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson, in Nazi Germany. Through the Holocaust and the war, as hatred and death loom around her, her passion for words helps her persevere.
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