Lilla Crawford

Lilla Crawford is an American actress born on February 20, 2001, who began her career at age six appearing in commercials. Her early ambition was rooted in a desire to become an animated voice actress, and she has credited her mother with helping her secure representation after Crawford pressed her to find an agent.

Crawford relocated from Los Angeles to New York City to pursue stage work, making her Broadway debut in 2011 as Debbie in the closing cast of Billy Elliot: The Musical. The following year, at age eleven, she was cast in the title role of the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie, directed by James Lapine. The selection process was extensive: more than 5,000 girls auditioned over a nine-month period, and Crawford advanced through five or six callbacks before a final round involving approximately a dozen candidates. Her connection to the material predated the Broadway production — she had previously performed in a community theatre staging of Annie, where she played the role of Bert Healy. During her run in the revival, she produced the Broadway.com video blog "Simply Red," which earned her recognition as one of the site's most clicked stars of 2013.

Beyond her Broadway credits, Crawford played The Little Girl in a concert production of Ragtime at Avery Fisher Hall, sharing the stage with Lea Salonga and Norm Lewis, among others. She also participated in a workshop of Home the Musical by Scott Alan in New York City, as well as a workshop production of Melissa Arctic, and took on the role of Little Katie in the former.

Crawford made her major studio film debut as Little Red Riding Hood in the 2014 Disney adaptation of Into the Woods, released on December 25 of that year. On television, she voiced Sunny, the title character of the Nickelodeon animated series Sunny Day, from 2017 to 2020, fulfilling the early ambition that had first drawn her to performing. Beginning in 2018, she also appeared in the Netflix series The Who Was? Show, which is based on the Who Was book series.