The Untold Truth Of Alexandra Daddario

Alexandra Daddario rose to fame in the 2010s as Annabeth in "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" and "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters," but she's had roles in dozens of other films and TV shows, including "White Collar," "Why Women Kill," "Baywatch," "The Girlfriend Experience," and "The White Lotus." Anyone who's watched her on the big or small screen knows that Daddario is incredibly talented, and she's also widely acknowledged as one of the most beautiful celebs in Hollywood, with The Trend Spotter noting that her "eyes could pierce your soul with their striking blue gaze."

While you may have been a fan of Daddario for years, how much do you really know about her? Even die-hard fans may not know what the young Daddario wanted to be when she grew up, or the production in which she made her professional acting debut. To learn these facts and more, keep reading for the untold truth of Alexandra Daddario.

While Alexandra Daddario always loved acting, as a young girl she thought that she'd follow in the footsteps of her parents, who are both lawyers, as she told Us Weekly. Some parents might want their kids to follow their own career paths, but Daddario told Interview that her mom actually talked her out of the legal profession, saying, "You can do anything you want — except be a lawyer."

Daddario added that her mom — who did some modeling before becoming a lawyer — and her dad supported her acting dreams as they saw it "ultimately made me happy." Still, Daddario admitted surprise at there not being "a ton of pushback" about her chosen career, considering "where I came from." In an interview with Schön!, Daddario said that she "always wanted to act" but it took her some time to view it as a possibility — and her parents being attorneys was the least of it. "In the world that I grew up in, it seemed like actors were manufactured in a lab," she said. "Being a normal person, you could never be an actor."

Thankfully, Daddario decided to pursue what she once thought was an unattainable dream, and once she did, things just started falling together. "I just took acting lessons and loved it," she told Girl.com.au. "And I accidentally got an agent." Talk about meant to be!

While you may not have heard of Alexandra Daddario until she starred in "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" in 2010, she actually "did commercials for a long time," as she told Girl.com.au.

She also had a string of smaller roles on film and television leading up to her "Percy Jackson" role, including parts in "The Squid and the Whale," "Conviction," "The Sopranos," "Law & Order," and "Nurse Jackie." Her first role TV role, though, was a meaty arc on the soap opera "All My Children," playing Laurie Lewis in 43 episodes from 2002 to 2003 when she was just 16.

"The soap opera life was great," she told Schön!, saying that the show was an educational experience that "taught me how to memorize lines, how to find my light, how cameras worked, and how to kiss a boy on camera." Daddario was written off the show after less than a year, per Soap Central. Or, as she jokingly put it in an interview with The Daily Beast, "I was fired from the soap."

While some actresses might be able to pinpoint their favorite project, Alexandra Daddario isn't one of them. While you might expect her role in the "Percy Jackson" role to be one of her faves, considering it brought her career to the big time, Daddario gave a more diplomatic answer when asked about the role she loved best. While she admitted it might be "cheesy," she told Schön! that she can't choose just one "because I really had really interesting experiences, though not all positive, with all of the roles." She explained that even those less positive experiences made her "a better actress."

There is, however, one role in particular that sticks out in her memory — playing the agoraphobic Constance in "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," a woman who is "always trying to pretend that everything's okay and everything is all right, but nothing is ever all right." Daddario found Constance "fascinating to play," especially as she could relate to experiencing "this underlying anxiety and I'm just pretending everything's great."

Raised in Manhattan, Alexandra Daddario considers herself a "city girl" through and through, as she told The Daily Beast. Per Modern Luxury, she grew up on the Upper East Side where she attended the Brearley School, an all-girls institution that she called "high-pressure."

She eventually moved to Los Angeles for her career, but it was a difficult transition, from learning how to drive to adjusting to the slower-paced lifestyle of the West Coast. "When I first moved here, I almost felt like I was obligated to hate LA, as a New Yorker," she admitted to Interview. "I moved way too fast for this city."

She was lonely after she first moved to Los Angeles, but she eventually grew to love her new home, attending yoga classes and downing green juice, both of which she jokes are "very cliché actress" things to do.

With over 900,000 followers on Twitter and a whopping 20.5 million on Instagram, Alexandra Daddario is pretty good at social media. There's no real method to her posts, other than being "genuine," as she told Schön!. "Sometimes I write little weird things, or what's on my mind ... I really don't force it," she said, adding that she won't post anything that "doesn't feel right."

A lot of her tweets are humorous or pithy, like one from 2017 that reads, "It's not the holidays until you've downloaded 8 versions of 'have yourself a merry little Christmas' and cried to all of them alone in your apartment." In an interview with Marie Claire, Daddario said that her tweets pretty accurately reflect her real-life humor, saying, "I'm a little nonsensical, I'm a little absurd and I don't take myself too seriously."

While her strategy — or lack thereof — has proven to be successful, she recognizes the pitfalls of living in an increasingly connected world. "I can't imagine what it's like to be a young woman growing up now with social media," she told Hollywood Life.

Dating is hard, even for celebrities. Fortunately, Alexandra Daddario has found that it has gotten easier as she's gotten older, especially after she hit her 30s. "People told me that my thirties would be the best time of my life, and I think ... it's kind of true," she told Access. She explained that while your twenties are about "work[ing] really hard," by "your early thirties ... you know yourself better."

Per Ranker, Daddario has been linked to a few men over the years, including Zac Efron and Jason Fuchs, and was once engaged to her "Percy Jackson" co-star Logan Lerman. Although she hasn't settled down yet, she knows what she is looking for and isn't going to compromise her ideals. "I think love is something you figure out later on in life, and you have to make a lot of mistakes to figure out what love is, which is why we all have s***ty, tumultuous relationships when we're younger, and it's harder to let go," she told The Daily Beast in 2017.

The "Percy Jackson" franchise has drawn a lot of comparisons to "Harry Potter." Both franchises are based on books featuring a young, male protagonist and are set in magical worlds, so some accuse the "Percy Jackson" franchise of ripping off "Harry Potter." "Percy Jackson" author Rick Riordan admitted on his website that he was inspired by "Harry Potter," although he argued that mythology was a bigger influence.

Subsequently, "Percy Jackson" had a lot of expectations to live up to when it hit the big screen and, while Daddario was aware of them, she didn't worry too much — she was just excited to be cast in the franchise and focused on doing her best. "I wasn't thinking about, 'Is this too similar to Harry Potter,' or, 'Is this gonna work,' or anything like that," she told Collider.

The first "Percy Jackson" film made over $226 million worldwide at the box office, an impressive but still paltry sum compared to the first "Harry Potter" film, which made over $1 billion, as noted by Box Office Mojo. Daddario didn't become a household name after starring in the franchise, contrary to what she'd expected. She told The Daily Beast, "Look, when I did 'Percy Jackson' people told me, 'Oh, you're going to be so famous ... it's going to be huge,' and it wasn't." Still, it did put her on the Hollywood radar, with Daddario saying, "It was big for my career."

Alexandra Daddario has had to get into seriously good shape for some of her roles. The "Percy Jackson" films, for example, required her to study sword fighting and archery. She was also "chased by a guy with a chain saw" in "Texas Chainsaw 3D," as she told Interview, and all of that running required a certain amount of stamina.

While such roles are physically demanding, Daddario told That Shelf that she is able to power through because "you get into this sort of adrenaline thing that you get when you have to keep going."

It's proof of just how much Daddario loves what she does that she is happy to tackle such roles. She explained that since she is "just really passionate about what I do and excited," it helps keep her going and "somehow my body just finds a way to make it through, I guess."

Alexandra Daddario has been in a few romantic comedies including "Can You Keep a Secret" and "Baked In Brooklyn." It makes sense, considering that she adores the genre, telling Brief Take that some of her favorites include the classics "Sliding Doors," "Notting Hill," and "When Harry Met Sally." She explained that romantic comedies offer escape and are a good pick-me-up, especially "as I get older and life gets more complicated and stuff like that." Daddario added that rom-coms are "really fun and delightful."

While Daddario has also been in horror films, including "The Attic," "Texas Chainsaw 3D," and "We Summon the Darkness," she's not as big of a fan of scary flicks. "I get scared very easily," she admitted to CinemaBlend, adding that she "very much grew up on Disney films and my mom used to edit out all the scary parts."

From playing Annabeth, the daughter of the Greek goddess Athena in the "Percy Jackson" movies to portraying the tough-as-nails Blake in the adventure film "San Andreas," Alexandra Daddario often embodies strong, confident characters who kick some major butt. In real life, though, she's more reserved. "I'm very shy," she admitted to Girl.com.au.

She's also not sure how things would play out if she were ever in a life-or-death situation, telling Interview, "I'm a combination between extreme insecurity and extreme confidence."

While Daddario might not be too sure of herself, she is willing to work for what she wants, whether it's learning sword choreography for "Percy Jackson" or weight training to get in incredible shape for her role in "Baywatch." As she told Muscle and Fitness, "Your full badass potential is reached when you work your butt off." We're pretty sure that Daddario can accomplish whatever she puts her mind to!

When we say that Alexandra Daddario loves dogs, we mean she really loves dogs. A cute pup is hard to resist, but Daddario's passion for man's best friend includes an entire canine campaign. In an interview with Us Weekly, she said, "Dog adoption is definitely the cause closest to my heart."

To that end, she's used her platform to help dogs get rescued, including partnering with Subaru for their Make a Dog's Day campaign which helps shelter dogs find homes. She has also collaborated with Autotrader's dog adoption site, Dogtrader.com. Daddario spoke to Muscle and Fitness about the initiative, saying, "We need to get dogs out of shelters and into loving homes!"

Daddario follows the "adopt don't shop" mantra, telling Pop Culture, "I love to adopt and foster dogs. My travel schedule makes it hard to have more than one permanent dog, but I would adopt every dog if I could."

Sadly, her beloved dog, Levon, died in December 2020. "He loved me and I loved him and we were a little team and I am completely heartbroken over losing him," she wrote in a touching Instagram tribute.

The #MeToo Movement had a huge impact not just on Hollywood but also on the rest of the world, and Alexandra Daddario was on board with the long-overdue reckoning. "I want other women to know it's okay to speak up," she tweeted in 2017. "I know how it feels to be too scared to. Let's change the stigma. #MeToo."

In an interview with Marie Claire Australia the following year, she reiterated that women "should feel confident to have a voice and we should feel confident to speak up." Daddario added that she has been "afraid to speak up" about incidents in her own life and hopes that future generations won't have to go through the same thing but that they will "feel the confidence to speak up in a way that I and others couldn't."

While Daddario expressed her support for the movement, she said she was not "really comfortable talking about" her own experiences, of which there were many. "I've had a whole variety of different things over the years happen," she said.

Alexandra Daddario is a talented actress, but that's not her only performing arts skill. She's also an adept musician with some serious piano skills that she sometimes shares with her followers on Instagram. Daddario started taking piano lessons at the age of 9, and while she didn't become a professional pianist, all the work she put into memorizing music for performances turned out to be "good training for being an actress," as she told Marie Claire (via People).

She was even able to put her talent to good use in an episode of "Parenthood," in which she played a passage from Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."

Daddario is proud of her piano skills, as she should be. "I'm a really good pianist, actually," she told Interview, adding that she even writes music. "It's a good way of de-stressing," she told the outlet. We'd love to hear more music from her in the future. 

Alexandra Daddario is the quintessential girl next door, so it's hard to imagine her playing a mean girl in a movie, let alone a villain. She'd like to do just that, though, telling That Shelf that she would enjoy expanding her range to portraying a bad guy. "It's cool to explore that [darker] side of yourself and I am definitely not opposed to it," she said when asked if she'd ever want to portray a "killer."

She's been in the industry since her teens, so Daddario is ready to get a bit more experimental in her career. Aside from being down with playing a villain, she told Hollywood Life that she "want[s] to explore all different kinds of things." She added, "I'm a big believer in challenging myself, meeting new people, learning from different kinds of people."

It will certainly be interesting to see how Daddario's career evolves in the coming years!