She's a survivor!

Having acted in 15 movies over the past three years, Anna Kendrick is well versed in the indignities of the modern publicity trail, where stars are increasingly expected to do much more than engage in witty banter.

Marie Claire once asked Kendrick to get drunk during an interview. She complied. So when Kendrick, 29, arrived to chat about her continuing adventures in musical comedy — her Pitch Perfect 2 — it seemed perfectly reasonable to demand that she sing the answers to questions using nothing but song lyrics. Kendrick, as game as ever, agreed.

What goes through her mind when these odd, borderline-offensive requests are made in the name of celebrity journalism? Kendrick, without missing a beat, served up an answer courtesy of Destiny’s Child: “I’m a survivor! I’m not gon’ give up! I’m not gon’ stop! I’m gon’ work harder!”

Impressive. But that was a softball. “Some people loathe sequels,” I asked her. “Your response?” I thought that perhaps she would opt for 1980s pop (“Nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart”) or maybe Sly and the Family Stone (“Different strokes for different folks”). Instead, she blurted out a line from a Kendrick Lamar hit. “Bitch, don’t kill my vibe,” she said, duplicating Lamar’s voice.

And there you have Anna Kendrick: irrepressibly clever, eager to please, musically gifted, able to surprise, all-around cool chick. No one underestimates Kendrick. She was nominated for a Tony Award at the age of 12 for her supporting role in the Broadway musical High Society. In 2010, when she was 24, Kendrick was nominated for an Oscar, for her overly efficient corporate drone in Up in the Air. She has acted in big franchise movies (the Twilight series), tiny indies (Drinking Buddies), R-rated thrillers (End of Watch) and movie musicals (Into the Woods, Pitch Perfect).

“In case you can’t tell, I don’t really have a career strategy,” she said. “My decisions are entirely based on, ‘Well, I’m around, and this is something that the 15-year-old me would be excited to do.’”

With Pitch Perfect 2, Kendrick may add another accomplishment to her résumé. The PG-13 sequel, which finds the misfit Barden Bellas squaring off against a German a cappella group called Das Sound Machine, represents the first time Kendrick has anchored a summer blockbuster. But Pitch Perfect 2 — part Animal House with women, part Glee goes to college, part Bring It On — was not an idea that immediately thrilled Kendrick. She started thinking about critical washouts like Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and “getting understandably nervous because comedy sequels are really hard to pull off,” she said.

In the end, Kendrick agreed to reprise Beca, a coolheaded Bellas member who functions as a counter to the ribald high jinks of Fat Amy and crew. “The machinery was so much more present on the second one,” Kendrick said. “There’s worrying over product placement and how many deluxe-edition albums are we going to be able to pull out of this one and heightened choreography.”

Kendrick said she had relied on the director of the first movie, Jason Moore, and the screenwriter of both films, Kay Cannon, to remain grounded. “I would email Jason and Kay before certain scenes and just get words of wisdom or a little mantra from Kay,” Kendrick said. “Sometimes it was just great to be reminded by Kay that the Bellas are supposed to be people trying to find their place.”

Despite her brother’s assessment of her fearlessness, it may actually be fear that keeps Kendrick working so hard. “When you grow up middle class, you just always feel like you’ve got to be working or you won’t be able to pay the bills,” she said. “I never let myself forget that I can’t just put this down and expect it to be waiting for me when I feel like coming back to it. There is someone else out there who can do my job.”

Critics don’t seem to agree. Sure, she has starred in her share of terrible movies. One is Rapture-Palooza, a comedic fantasy that even she has never watched, she said. But Kendrick is more often than not singled out as indispensable.

“Kendrick is spectacularly good — moving and honest, able to deliver the big numbers without tiring out the audience or scaling her effects too aggressively for the camera,” Michael Phillips, a critic for The Chicago Tribune, wrote of her performance in The Last Five Years.

It’s true that Hollywood does not have a shortage of young actresses, but casting directors say Kendrick has a dual appeal that is extremely rare. Women are drawn to her wit, intellect and get-off-my-runway confidence. At the same time, a lot of men see her as the perfect girlfriend: pretty but still approachable, brainy yet able to knock back whiskey and hold her own in a game of Assassin’s Creed.