Evan Rachel Wood

Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer born on September 7, 1987, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Raised in a theatrical family, her mother is an actress, director, and acting coach, while her father is an actor, theater director, and co-founder of the Theatre in the Park community theatre company. Wood began her acting career at a young age, appearing in her father's stage productions as well as early 1990s television films shot in North Carolina. She attended Cary Elementary School before moving with her mother to Los Angeles in 1997, where she was later homeschooled.

After making her major film debut in Digging to China (1997) and landing a regular role in the series Once and Again (1999–2002), Wood achieved her critical breakthrough starring in the 2003 film Thirteen. Her portrayal of Tracy Freeland earned her nominations for both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She subsequently starred in various independent and studio feature films, including The Upside of Anger (2005), Pretty Persuasion (2005), Down in the Valley (2005), Running with Scissors (2006), Across the Universe (2007), The Life Before Her Eyes (2007), and The Wrestler (2008).

In addition to her film work, Wood built a prominent career on television. She had a recurring role on HBO's supernatural drama series True Blood from 2009 to 2011 and starred in the 2011 miniseries Mildred Pierce, receiving Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress. From 2016 to 2022, she starred as the sentient android Dolores Abernathy in the HBO science-fiction series Westworld, a role that brought her a Critics' Choice Television Award along with multiple Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

Her further feature projects include Whatever Works (2009), The Conspirator (2011), The Ides of March (2011), and Kajillionaire (2020). She provided voice work for animated films such as Strange Magic (2015) and Frozen 2 (2019), and portrayed Madonna in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022). In 2024, Wood began starring in an Off-Broadway revival of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.

Beyond acting, Wood has pursued various musical projects. She formed the electro-pop duo Rebel and a Basketcase in 2016, and later co-founded the cover duo Evan + Zane, which released the album Dreams in 2022. She also made her first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2019 for the song "Show Yourself".