Julia Garner
- Born:
- February 1, 1994, Bronx, New York, U.S. (age 30)
Julia Garner (born February 1, 1994, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an American actress whose breakthrough came playing devious and street-smart Ruth Langmore in the award-winning Netflix crime thriller Ozark (2017–22). For her performance she won three Emmy awards (2019, 2020, and 2022) for best supporting actress in a drama series. She continued to earn accolades for her portrayals of complex characters, in The Assistant and Inventing Anna.
Early life
Garner is the second of two daughters born to Tamar Gingold, an Israeli comedic actress turned therapist, and Thomas Garner, a painter and teacher. She grew up in Riverdale, an upper-middle-class section of the Bronx, where she watched classic movies with her artistic parents and elder sister, Anna Garner. As a youth, Julia Garner suffered from epilepsy and had learning disabilities, so she attended Eagle Hill School, a private school in Greenwich, Connecticut, for children who learn differently from others. She began taking acting classes at age 14 to help overcome her shyness.
“I had really bad reading problems and learning disabilities, and I was also very sick as a child, with epilepsy,” Julia Garner told W magazine in 2019. “I felt like everything that I said was stupid, so I just shut down. But when I took acting, I discovered that I could use someone else’s lines and still express my own feelings.”
Martha Marcy May Marlene and other early roles
Garner was auditioning for acting roles in student films at Columbia University, New York City, when at age 16 she learned through a filmmaker friend about an open casting call for the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). She landed a role playing a cult member alongside actress Elizabeth Olsen and thus kicked off her feature film acting career. Garner’s next feature film, Electrick Children (2012), was her first film in the lead role. She portrayed a fundamentalist Mormon who travels to Las Vegas in search of the singer of the song she believes has caused her to conceive through immaculate conception. Filmmaker Magazine noted that, although the movie’s premise felt wacky, Garner played the role “with a guileless and magnetic sincerity.”
Garner played the role of a classmate in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), based on Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 young adult novel, as well as roles in The Last Exorcism: Part II (2013) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). Garner then starred as another pregnant teenager, this time in Grandma (2015).
The Americans and Ozark
Just after receiving a degree in psychology in 2015 from Indiana University, Bloomington, Garner joined the cast of the FX television espionage drama The Americans, playing the teenage daughter of a CIA official involved with an undercover KGB agent. She remained with the show until its last season, in 2018. Meanwhile, Garner gained widespread attention for her scene-stealing portrayal of teenage criminal Ruth Langmore in Ozark. Lead actor Jason Bateman told The Gentlewoman in 2019, “As soon as Julia started, we were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a much bigger character than even in the [show] bible.’ ” In addition to her three Emmy wins, Garner received a Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a drama series for her part in the show’s last season (2022).
Waco, The Assistant, and other projects from the late 2010s
Between acting in The Americans and Ozark, Garner appeared in the 2018 Showtime miniseries Waco, portraying Michele Jones, whom cult leader David Koresh took as a second wife while she was a teenager, and in the first season (2018) of the true-crime drama Dirty John, playing the daughter of a wealthy interior designer who falls for a man she does not realize is dangerous. In 2019 Garner earned wide acclaim for her portrayal of Jane, a conflicted junior aide to a powerful production company executive in The Assistant. Although Harvey Weinstein is never mentioned in the film, audiences may infer that the movie is based on the events that led to his downfall in 2017. One movie critic, writing for RogerEbert.com, remarked, “The expressive face of Julia Garner…is central here. Every thought, every emotion, every single thing Jane thinks and then chooses not to say is crucial in building the tension in The Assistant.
Inventing Anna and other projects from the 2020s
Garner continued to earn rave reviews for her work, especially for her portrayal of con artist Anna Sorokin in Inventing Anna (2022). That Netflix series was inspired by journalist Jessica Pressler’s 2018 New York Magazine article about Sorokin, a woman who went by the name Anna Delvey and claimed to be a wealthy German heiress to swindle money and goods from banks, hotels, and wealthy socialites in New York City. Garner received nominations for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for best actress in a limited series. In 2023 she reteamed with The Assistant director Kitty Green for The Royal Hotel. The film was inspired by the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, about two cash-strapped Finnish backpackers who face volatile sexism while bartending at a hotel pub in Coolgardie, Australia.
Other work and personal life
In addition to acting, Garner has appeared in advertising campaigns for Kate Spade, Swarovski, Miu Miu, Prada, Gucci, and Nespresso. She walked the runway for Balenciaga at Paris Fashion Week in 2016 and for Gucci at Milan Fashion Week in 2024. In 2019 Garner married musician Mark Foster, founding member of the band Foster the People. Although the couple had met at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, they did not begin dating until a few months before their wedding.