Jena Malone

Jena Laine Malone was born on November 21, 1984, in Sparks, Nevada, to Deborah Malone and Edward Berge, whose father Karl Berge owned Karl's Silver Club in Sparks. Her father is of partly Norwegian descent, and Malone also has Irish ancestry. Raised by her mother and her mother's girlfriend, Malone grew up in financially precarious circumstances, with her family relocating frequently and at times living without stable housing. By age nine she had lived in 27 different locations. She first developed an interest in acting while watching her mother perform in community theater in the Lake Tahoe area. In 1995 the family moved to Las Vegas, where Malone began taking acting classes while her mother worked in a call center. She subsequently persuaded her mother to relocate to Los Angeles so she could pursue a professional acting career. Malone was home-schooled from sixth through eighth grade and attended the Professional Children's School in New York City for ninth grade, dropping out of high school in 1999 and earning a General Educational Development certificate in 2001.

Malone's professional acting career began with the television film Bastard Out of Carolina in 1996, a role that earned her nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Debut Performance and at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries. The following year she received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film for her work in the television film Hope, in which she portrayed a young girl coming of age in a small town in the 1960s. Also in 1997, she was cast in Robert Zemeckis's science fiction film Contact, playing the childhood version of Jodie Foster's lead character, a performance that won her a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. In 1998 she appeared opposite Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, and Ed Harris in the drama Stepmom, playing an adolescent girl whose father has remarried and whose mother is terminally ill. The film grossed over $150 million against a $50 million budget. In 1999 she played Heather Aubrey, the teenage daughter of Kelly Preston's character, in For Love of the Game alongside Kevin Costner.

Malone opened the following decade with the television film Cheaters in 2000, taking the lead role in a story based on a Chicago high school team that cheated in the United States Academic Decathlon. In 2001 she took on her first cinematic leading role in the psychological science fiction thriller Donnie Darko, playing Gretchen Ross, the new girl in town who becomes the girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal's title character. Though the film underperformed at the box office, it later became a cult film. That same year she appeared in a supporting capacity in Life as a House, portraying the girlfriend of a young man played by Hayden Christensen whose ailing father, played by Kevin Kline, is building a home. In 2002 she co-produced the independent comedy-drama American Girl, the first feature in which she received top billing, co-starring with Brad Renfro and Alicia Witt. That same year she appeared opposite Emile Hirsch in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, which also featured Vincent D'Onofrio and Jodie Foster. In 2003 she appeared in Cold Mountain and in the miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil.

Malone received top billing in the 2004 dark comedy Saved!, portraying a Christian high school student who discovers her boyfriend is gay. The following year she was cast as Lydia Bennet in Joe Wright's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and also appeared in a supporting role in Rebecca Miller's drama The Ballad of Jack and Rose. In 2006 she made her Broadway debut, appearing in a production of the Tony Award-winning play Doubt, taking on the role of Sister James. The production had originally opened on Broadway in 2005. She also appeared that year in filmmaker M. Blash's improvised feature Lying, co-starring with Chloë Sevigny.

Malone continued her film career with Sean Penn's Into the Wild in 2007 and the horror film The Ruins in 2008. She entered the action genre with Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch in 2011. Her highest-grossing work came with the role of Johanna Mason in the Hunger Games film series, which spanned from 2013 to 2015 and earned her a Teen Choice Award. Subsequent film credits include the horror films The Neon Demon and the thriller Nocturnal Animals, both in 2016, the drama The Public in 2018, the horror film Antebellum in 2020, the drama Lorelei in 2020 which she also executive produced, the horror film Swallowed in 2022, Consecration in 2023, the thriller Love Lies Bleeding in 2024, and the Western Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 in 2024. Her television work includes the crime dramas Too Old to Die Young in 2019 and Goliath in 2021.