Evan Rachel Wood

Evan Rachel Wood (born September 7, 1987) is an American actress. She is the recipient of a Critics' Choice Television Award as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

She began acting in the 1990s, appearing in several television series, including Once and Again (1999–2002). She expanded to films at the age of nine in Digging to China (1997) and garnered praise for her Golden Globe-nominated role as a troubled teenager in the drama film Thirteen (2003). After starring in several independent films, Wood appeared in more mainstream films, including The Wrestler (2008), Whatever Works (2009), and The Ides of March (2011).

She returned to television in the recurring role of Sophie-Anne Leclerq on True Blood from 2009 to 2011. She appeared in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe and Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She starred as sentient android Dolores Abernathy in the HBO series Westworld (2016–2022), for which she won a Critics' Choice Award and earned Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations. Wood had a voice role in the Disney animated film Frozen 2 (2019), and portrayed Madonna in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022).

Early life and family

Wood was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 7, 1987. Her mother, Sara Lynn Moore, is an actress, director, and acting coach. Her father, Ira David Wood III, is an actor, theater director and playwright prominent in Raleigh, where he is the co-founder and executive director of a community theatre company called Theatre in the Park. Wood's brother, Ira David Wood IV, is also an actor; she has two other brothers, Dana and Thomas, and a sister named Aden. Her paternal aunt, Carol Winstead Wood, was a production designer in Hollywood.

Of having a traditionally masculine given name, Wood has said: "My mother had a dream that she was gonna have a daughter with blond hair and blue eyes named Evan, so that was just my name."

Wood was actively involved in Theatre in the Park while growing up, including an appearance in the 1987 production of her father's musical comedy adaptation of A Christmas Carol when she was a few months old. She subsequently played the Ghost of Christmas Past in several productions there, and starred as Helen Keller alongside her mother (as Anne Sullivan) in The Miracle Worker, under her father's direction.

She attended Cary Elementary School in Cary, North Carolina, where she starred in its production of The Little Mermaid. When her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to Los Angeles in 1997 to further her acting career. She attended public school in California before leaving at age 12 for homeschooling. She received her high school diploma at 15. Wood said she earned a black belt in taekwondo when she was 12, and that she participated in the AAU Junior Olympic Games.

Career

1993–2000: Early work

Wood began her career appearing in several television films that were shot in her native North Carolina from 1993 onwards. She made her acting debut at the beginning of that year in Sondra Locke's Death in Small Doses. She had recurring roles in the television series American Gothic (1995–1996) and Profiler (1998–1999), receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Young Actress in a TV Drama Series at the 21st Young Artist Awards for the latter.

Wood's first major screen role was in the 1997 film Digging to China, as a ten-year-old girl living with her alcoholic mother, played by Cathy Moriarty, who forms an unlikely friendship with a man with intellectual disability, played by Kevin Bacon. It was shot in Western North Carolina and won the Children's Jury Award at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. Wood remembers the role as initially hard, but that it "eventually led to her decision that acting is something she might never want to stop doing." The following year she had a role in Practical Magic, a fantasy film, for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Young Actress at the 20th Young Artist Awards. It was followed by the 1999 made-for-television thriller Down Will Come Baby, for which she was nominated for the YoungStar Award for Best Young Actress in a Mini-Series/Made for TV Film.

From 1999 to 2002, Wood was a regular on the ABC television family drama Once and Again in the role of Jessie Sammler. Her character dealt with her parents' divorce, anorexia, and falling in love with her best friend Katie, played by Mischa Barton, in what became the first teen lesbian pairing on network television. For her performance as Jessie, Wood was nominated for the YoungStar Award for Best Young Actress, and won Best Ensemble in a TV Series along with her co-stars Julia Whelan and Meredith Deane, at the 22nd Young Artist Awards.

2001–2005: Breakthrough

Wood made her teenage debut as a leading film actress in 2001's Little Secrets, directed by Blair Treu, where she played 14-year-old aspiring concert violinist Emily Lindstrom. For that role, she was nominated for Best Leading Young Actress at the 24th Young Artist Awards. Wood next played a supporting role in Andrew Niccol's 2002 satirical science fiction film Simone. That same year, Wood was recognized as One to Watch at the Young Hollywood Awards.

Wood's breakout film role followed with Catherine Hardwicke's 2003 film Thirteen. She starred as Tracy Louise Freeland, a young teen who sinks into a downward spiral of hard drugs, sex, and petty crime. Her performance garnered critical acclaim, earning her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Lead Actress. During the time of Thirteen's release, Wood was featured on the cover of Vogue, with the magazine naming her as one of the "It Girls" of Hollywood. She similarly appeared, along with eight other teen actresses, on the cover of Vanity Fair's Young Hollywood issue in July 2003. A supporting role in Ron Howard's The Missing, in which she played the kidnapped daughter Lilly Gilkeson, followed the same year, earning her a nomination for Best Leading Young Actress at the 25th Young Artist Awards.

In 2005, Wood appeared in the Mike Binder-directed The Upside of Anger, a well-reviewed film in which Wood played Lavender "Popeye" Wolfmeyer, one of four sisters dealing with their father's absence. Her character narrated the film. Wood's next two starring roles were in dark independent films. In the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize nominee Pretty Persuasion, a black comedy focusing on the themes of sexual harassment in schools and attitudes about women in media and society, Wood played Kimberly Joyce, a manipulative, sexually active high-schooler. One critic commented, "Wood does flip cynicism with such precise, easy rhythms and with such obvious pleasure in naughtiness that she's impossible to hate." David Jacobson's neo-western Down in the Valley premiered later that year, in which Wood's character, Tobe, falls in love with an older man, played by Edward Norton, a cowboy who is at odds with modern society. Of her performance, it was written that "Wood conveys every bit of the adamant certainty and aching vulnerability inherent in late adolescence." Wood has commented on her sexually themed roles, saying that she is not aiming for the "shock factor" in her film choices. Also in 2005, Wood starred in the music videos for Bright Eyes' "At the Bottom of Everything" and Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends".

2006–2008: Independent films

By 2006, Wood was described by The Guardian as being "one of the best actresses of her generation." Later that year, she received the Spotlight Award for Emerging Talent at Premiere magazine's annual Women in Hollywood gala. Also in 2006, Wood appeared with an all-star ensemble cast as Natalie Finch in the comedy-drama film Running with Scissors. Directed by Ryan Murphy and starring Annette Bening, the film was based on the memoir by Augusten Burroughs, which is a semi-autobiographical account of Burroughs' childhood in a dysfunctional family.

Wood had roles in two films released in September 2007. King of California, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of a bipolar jazz musician (Michael Douglas) and his long-suffering teenage daughter, Miranda (Wood), who are reunited after his two-year stay in a mental institution and who embark on a quixotic search for Spanish treasure. One review praised Wood's performance as "excellent." The second film was Across the Universe, Julie Taymor's jukebox musical set to the songs of the Beatles that was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Musical or Comedy. Set during the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s, Wood played Lucy, an American teen who develops a relationship with her brother's British friend Jude (Jim Sturgess). The film featured her singing musical numbers, and she has described the role as her favorite. One critic wrote that "Wood brings much-needed emotional depth."