Olivia Thirlby

Olivia Jo Thirlby is an American actress born on October 6, 1986. She achieved widespread recognition for her feature film roles, notably portraying Leah in the 2007 comedy-drama Juno, Natalie in the 2011 science-fiction feature The Darkest Hour, and Judge Cassandra Anderson in the 2012 action adaptation Dredd. In 2023, she played Lilli Hornig in Christopher Nolan's biographical feature Oppenheimer.

Thirlby was raised in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, by her mother, an advertising executive, and her father, a contractor. She attended Friends Seminary in Gramercy, graduating in a class of 57 students. Her early creative background included attending the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts and the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. She took acting classes at the American Globe Theatre and spent time at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she finished a stage combat course certified by the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat.

While attending high school, Thirlby had a role in The Secret. She made her professional feature screen debut in United 93 and her television debut in Kidnapped in 2006. Following her breakthrough in Juno, she and co-star Elliot Page were attached to star in Jack & Diane, though both exited prior to production. In 2008, she appeared alongside Josh Peck in the Sundance Audience Award winner The Wackness. Although replaced by Amber Heard in Pineapple Express after rehearsals, she later joined director David Gordon Green on the animated pilot Good Vibes. She made her theatrical stage debut in Beau Willimon's Off-Broadway production Farragut North at the Atlantic Theater Company in late 2008, a role she reprised at the Geffen Playhouse in 2009.

Thirlby appeared in the HBO series Bored to Death in 2009, voiced promotional YouTube excerpts for the book Thirteen Reasons Why starting in 2008, and acted in the 2011 feature Margaret. After starring in the Russian-produced sci-fi film The Darkest Hour, she headlined the 2012 drama Nobody Walks opposite John Krasinski and Rosemarie DeWitt, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Her subsequent television work includes playing attorney Lucy Kittridge in the 2016 Amazon Studios series Goliath, portraying MCC minister Rebecca Dowery in Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q in 2019, and starring as Hero Brown in the 2021 series Y: The Last Man. Her other film projects include main roles in Damascus Cover, The White Orchid, and Above the Shadows. In her personal life, Thirlby stated she was bisexual in a 2011 interview and participated in the Self-Evident Truths Project. She married Jacques Pienaar in December 2014 after meeting on the set of Dredd, and Pienaar filed for divorce in March 2021.