She’s across from Tom Hanks. She had never heard of him.

Speaking recently via Zoom, Ms Zengel was a lot more chuckle and talkative – meaning a lot more like an ordinary 12-year-old girl – than her recent roles would suggest. She said that, like most children in Germany, she had spent most of that year at home and was currently in quarantine because her classmates had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Before being cast for the film, she said, she had never heard of Hanks. “I think I had seen the ‘Da Vinci Code’ before, but I didn’t know who it was,” she says. “I thought he was just an actor.”

In an email, Hanks praised Zengel’s ability to perform “without accumulation, without apprehension, and without self-awareness,” and said he wished he had “his same ease, his simplicity.”

Zengel said she had never taken acting lessons, “because I’m not sure I have much to learn.

“I stand in front of the camera, I know what I want and I do it,” she said in a neutral tone.

This focus and determination, explained her mother, Anne Zengel, has been her daughter’s trademark since she was little. Her first forays into theater, at age 4, were largely the result of parental frustration, she said, as her daughter was “three times more intense” than other children and would act if she was denied what she wanted.

“She had to function in society, so we had to figure out how to redirect her energy,” she said.