Kristen Wiig and Ellen Page Discuss Their Acting Paths In W Magazine’s October Issue

Kristen Wiig, Ellen Page, Cara Delevingne, Charlotte Casiraghi and Naomi Campbell are all cover girls for W Magazine's "The New Royals" feature. Actresses Kristen and Ellen both opened up about their road to being an actor in the magazine's latest issue. 

Saturday Night Live alum Kristen is a natural when it comes to being in front of the camera, but acting wasn't the profession she thought she would have. In fact, she always thought she would be a teacher.

"I thought I was going to be an art teacher. I was way too scared to say I wanted to be an actor or a comedian," Kristen told W Magazine. "Then I took a performance-art class in college. You could do anything: People peed in jars and called it art. The class was silly, but I really liked performing."

The Bridesmaids cowriter and actress revealed that she had to look herself straight in the mirror before she mustered up the courage to make the big move to Los Angeles and follow her acting dreams.

"I had this theory that if you looked in the mirror and asked yourself a question, you had to tell yourself the truth. So, I asked, 'What do you want to do?' I stared in the mirror and said to myself, 'I want to move to LA and be an actor.' And that was that," the 41-year-old actress revealed.

Juno actress Ellen, on the other hand, always knew that acting was what she wanted to do. The 27-year-old Canadian-born star began her acting career while she was still in elementary school.

"I was 10 when I started acting. A casting director came to my school looking for kids. I auditioned for a TV movie called Pit Pony and I got it," Ellen recalled in her W Magazine interview.

"Acting became an immediate fixation. I was a child, but I was so ambitious. At 17, I costarred in Hard Candy, about a pedophile and his victim, whom I played. My character had to castrate the pedophile. I've always loved learning things for a part, and I remember researching castration and thinking, this is so interesting. I'm a nerd that way. I love the challenge of this job," she added.

You can learn more about these two powerful actresses and the other three cover girls in the October issue of W Magazine.