Rise to Fame
A Tony nomination for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is what cracked the door open. She'd spent years in regional theater, doing four seasons with the American Players Theatre and bouncing between Wisconsin and Chicago, before Steppenwolf cast her as Honey in 2010. The Broadway run got her in front of the right people. The Leftovers landed shortly after, and as Nora Durst, the grief-hollowed woman who lost her entire family in a supernatural event, she delivered the kind of performance that makes critics run out of adjectives. The Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress in a Drama confirmed what the theater world already knew.
In the Spotlight
Three Emmy nominations across three completely different genres, and none of them came from chasing franchise money. The White Lotus Season 3 nod (as Laurie, a quietly devastated divorced lawyer third-wheeling her own girls' trip) is her latest, and the finale monologue that earned it is what critics are still dissecting. She skipped the 2026 Golden Globes because she had a Broadway show that night. The Gilded Age Season 4 is also coming. She's building a career on being the best thing in rooms that don't necessarily bill her as the star.
Side Notes
She and Tracy Letts got married in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in the middle of his recovery from emergency gallbladder surgery. She wore a red t-shirt. He wore his hospital gown. They'd met on the set of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which makes the whole story feel like a Tracy Letts play. She changed her college major eight times before graduating, spent a semester abroad in Spain, and traveled to Central America to volunteer at the orphanage her adopted sister had come from. Motion capture for a Wisconsin video game company covered the rent between theater gigs.