Parker Posey

Parker Christian Posey was born on November 8, 1968, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Lynda Posey, a chef, and Chris Posey, a car dealership owner. She has a twin brother, Christopher, and was named after model Suzy Parker. Following her birth, the family relocated to Monroe, Louisiana, where they lived for eleven years before settling in Laurel, Mississippi, where her mother worked as a chef and culinary instructor for the Viking Range Corporation and her father continued operating a car dealership. Posey was raised Catholic. As a child she demonstrated an early inclination toward performance, attending Strong River Camp and Farm in Pinola, Mississippi, studying ballet, and participating in summer programs at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. At age twelve she auditioned for the school's competitive ballet department but was not accepted, after which her father encouraged her to pursue acting.

Posey enrolled at the State University of New York at Purchase to study drama. While still a student, a talent agent saw her perform in a play and signed her, sending her out for independent film and off-off-Broadway auditions. Less than three weeks before graduation, she left school after landing an eight-episode role as Tess Shelby on the daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Her first film appearances came in 1993, in Steve Barron's Coneheads, Steven Starr's Joey Breaker, and Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. The following year she appeared in Hal Hartley's short film Opera No. 1 and his crime comedy Amateur, beginning a recurring collaboration with the director. She also appeared that year in Nora Ephron's Mixed Nuts, Nigel Dick's Final Combination, and Rory Kelly's Sleep with Me.

Her breakthrough came with the 1995 film Party Girl, directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer, in which she played a free-spirited young woman in New York City. Shot in nineteen days on a budget of $150,000, the film became an arthouse success and was the first feature film to premiere on the Internet. That same year she appeared in Peter Cohn's Drunks, Hartley's Flirt, Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation, Todd Verow's Frisk, and Noah Baumbach's directorial debut Kicking and Screaming. In 1996, Posey took on the role of a perky Dairy Queen employee in Christopher Guest's mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, joining a loose repertory group of actors who improvise much of the dialogue in Guest's films and receive equal fees and profit shares. That year she also appeared in Linklater's SubUrbia, Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, and Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers.

In 1997, Posey starred alongside Lisa Kudrow, Toni Collette, and Alanna Ubach in Clockwatchers, and received strong notices for her portrayal of a delusional woman in The House of Yes, for which she was awarded a Special Recognition for Acting Award at Sundance. That same year, Time magazine named her "Queen of the Indies," a title she has described as something of a professional hindrance. In 1998, she appeared in Hartley's Henry Fool, Alastair Reid's What Rats Won't Do, and Brian Skeet's The Misadventures of Margaret, as well as her first major studio film credit, Nora Ephron's romantic comedy You've Got Mail, in which she played an abrasive publisher opposite Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The film grossed over $250 million worldwide.

Posey continued her collaboration with Christopher Guest in Best in Show (2000), playing a stereotypical yuppie and Weimaraner owner in the mockumentary centered on the dog show circuit. Also in 2000, she appeared in Wes Craven's horror sequel Scream 3, which earned her a MTV Movie Award nomination, and the film grossed $161.8 million globally. She played a villainous record label CEO in the musical comedy Josie and the Pussycats (2001), a film that later developed a cult following. That same year, Posey made her Broadway debut in Taller Than a Dwarf, appearing on Broadway in 2000. She subsequently appeared in Guest's A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006), as well as Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2006) and Zoe Cassavetes's Broken English (2007). Later film credits include Woody Allen's Irrational Man (2015) and Café Society (2016), Kogonada's Columbus (2017), Guest's Mascots (2016), and Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid (2023).

On television, Posey starred in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space from 2018 to 2021, appeared in the HBO Max miniseries The Staircase in 2022, and joined the cast of the third season of HBO's anthology series The White Lotus in 2025. Over the course of her career she has received nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Independent Spirit Awards. In 2018, she published a memoir titled You're on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir.