Part of Stranger Things featuring Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, and Gaten Matarazzo.
Rise to Fame
She thought she bombed her first Stranger Things audition. She came back for a second, got the part, and spent nine years playing Nancy Wheeler across five seasons. Her filmography before the show was thin: a bit part in Hannah Montana: The Movie at 14, a festival-circuit lead in I Believe in Unicorns. Nancy wasn't the lead, but Dyer made her the moral center of the whole thing. The ensemble won a SAG Award in 2017.
In the Spotlight
Stranger Things ran nine years and five seasons, which is both a gift and a problem. She spent the downtime on film work (Velvet Buzzsaw, Yes, God, Yes, Things Heard & Seen) but none of those broke through commercially. Now she's signed onto Goodbye Girl (Amazon MGM, 2026) with Kiernan Shipka and Cole Sprouse. The casting is the first real signal about what her career looks like without the Hawkins address.
Side Notes
She got into acting by accident. A sprained ankle at sports camp freed a slot in drama camp, and her parents filled it. Her mother enrolled her and her sister in everything (ice skating, dance, theater) without pressure to commit. She attended Nashville School of the Arts, then designed her own curriculum at NYU's Gallatin School to accommodate filming schedules. The religious upbringing in Nashville made her casting in Yes, God, Yes, a comedy-drama about a Catholic teen's sexual awakening, feel like a deliberate statement.