Laura Prepon

Laura Prepon is an American actress and television director. She gained widespread recognition for her main role as Donna Pinciotti in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show, which ran from 1998 to 2006. She achieved further acclaim portraying Alex Vause in the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black from 2013 to 2019. Over the course of her career, she has also worked as a model, director, author, and executive producer across film and television.

Prepon was born on March 7, 1980, in Watchung, New Jersey, as the youngest of five children. Her mother was a high school teacher and gourmet home chef, and her father was an orthopedic surgeon who died in 1993 during open-heart surgery when Prepon was thirteen. Raised in an interfaith household with Jewish and Irish Catholic heritage, she attended Watchung Hills Regional High School until age 15 before studying drama at the Total Theatre Lab in New York City.

While studying in New York, Prepon acted in stage plays and worked as a model in Paris, Milan, and Brazil. In 1997, she made her screen debut in the Internet-based soap opera They Go On. Her breakout role arrived in 1998 when she was cast in That '70s Show, a project she remained with for eight seasons while also attending film school. During this period, she made her feature film debut in the 2001 musical comedy-drama Southlander, followed by roles in Slackers, The Pornographer: A Love Story, and the dark drama Lightning Bug, which she executive produced.

Following That '70s Show, Prepon starred as Hannah Daniels in the ABC drama series October Road from 2007 to 2008. She made guest appearances on series such as How I Met Your Mother, House M.D., In Plain Sight, and Castle, and voiced a marine in the video game Halo 2. After taking directing classes at the Art Center College of Design, she directed the short film Abide with Me and co-created the web series Neighbros. In 2012, she starred as the title character in the NBC sitcom Are You There, Chelsea?.

In 2012, Prepon was cast as Alex Vause in Orange Is the New Black, which premiered in 2013. In addition to starring in the series, she directed the fifth-season episode "The Reverse Midas Touch." Her film work during this era included the psychological thriller Karla, the romantic drama Come Early Morning, the comedy Lay the Favorite, the thriller The Girl on the Train, and the drama The Hero.

In 2016, Prepon co-wrote the wellness book The Stash Plan, which became a New York Times bestseller. She later launched a line of kitchenware called PrepOn Kitchen and began sharing online instructional culinary content. In 2023, she made a guest appearance in the follow-up sitcom That '90s Show. Prepon married actor Ben Foster in 2018, with whom she has two children; Foster filed for divorce in November 2024.