Rise to Fame
She quit ballet at 16 after boarding at the North Carolina School of the Arts for two years, then quit modeling four months in for the same reason: the body-image math didn't add up. Acting was accidental. Gia Coppola cast her in Palo Alto (2013) because she was on set visiting someone. The 2016 KENZO World commercial, directed by Spike Jonze, went viral and established her physicality as a genuine asset. Quentin Tarantino initially rejected her for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, called her back, then stayed up all night writing a new scene for her.
In the Spotlight
2024 confirmed what the arthouse circuit already knew: she's the default actress for directors who want to make audiences uncomfortable. Drive-Away Dolls for Ethan Coen, three separate characters in Kinds of Kindness for Yorgos Lanthimos, and a Golden Globe-nominated turn in The Substance for Coralie Fargeat, all in the same year. She's appeared in three Best Picture Oscar nominees. The upcoming slate includes Ridley Scott, which is a deliberately strange filmography for someone still in her twenties.
Side Notes
Andie MacDowell is her mother, but she grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, on grits and sweet tea, not in Malibu. She and her sister Rainey were debutantes at the Bal des debutantes in Paris as teenagers, which is both extremely fancy and completely at odds with the Yorgos Lanthimos films she gravitates toward now. She married Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift's main collaborator, in 2023. The debutante-to-body-horror pipeline isn't accidental. It's just a very specific set of priorities.