Brit Marling Biography

Brit Heyworth Marling (born August 7, 1983) is an American actress, screenwriter and film producer. She first gained recognition in 2004 with the documentary Boxers and Ballerinas and later became a Sundance star with the Searchlight movies Sound of My Voice (2011), Another Earth (2011) and The East (2013) which she co-wrote in addition to playing the lead role.

Early life

Marling was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of property developer parents John and Heidi Marling. She was named "Brit" after her Norwegian maternal great-grandmother. She grew up in Winnetka, Illinois and in Orlando, where she enrolled in the arts program at Dr. Phillips High School. Marling was interested in acting, but her parents encouraged her to focus on academics. She graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with degrees in economics and studio art, and was her class valedictorian.

Career

At Georgetown, Marling met her long-time collaborators, future directors Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij. Marling spent her junior year summer interning for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs as an investment analyst. She felt a lack of meaning a life spent there would have and later turned down a job offer from the firm, opting instead to move to Cuba with Mike Cahill to film the documentary Boxers and Ballerinas. The documentary gained Marling recognition in 2004, having co-written the film with Mike Cahill and Nicholas Shumaker and co-directed with Cahill.

In 2005, Marling moved with Cahill and Batmanglij to Los Angeles. Marling went to auditions and was offered roles in horror films, but rejected them. In an interview with The Daily Beast, she "wanted to be able to cast herself in roles that wouldn"?t require her to play the typical parts offered to young actresses, the perfunctory girlfriend or a crime victim." She was discovered by talent agent Hylda Queally.

In the summer of 2009 she joined a group of freegans with friend Zal Batmanglij, living in tents and retrieving food from dumpsters, to explore how other young people were constructing a meaningful life.

Marling co-wrote, co-produced, and acted in the 2011 films Sound of My Voice and Another Earth, directed by Batmanglij and Cahill respectively. Both of these films were featured at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, with Another Earth winning the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme. In 2012, she played Richard Gere's daughter in Arbitrage.

In 2013, she collaborated with Searchlight once again as co-writer and leading role in The East alongside Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgrd. Directed by Zal Batmanglij and co-written by Marling and Batmanglij, The East is based on the duo's experience as freegans and their concern with the side effects of prescription drugs.

Marling and Batmanglij collaborated to create drama series The OA that is slated to debut in 2016 on Netflix. It will be written by Marling and Batmanglij, who will produce the series along with Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner of Plan B, and Michael Sugar of Anonymous Content.

Despite her many roles in films she has co-written, Marling stated she "get[s] a lot more pleasure in acting in other people"?s stories" since "one of the great pleasures of acting is surrendering to someone else's point of view of the world."

Personal life

Marling's sister, Morgan, is also a film producer.

Marling previously dated Mike Cahill.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2007	The Recordist	Charlie Hall	Zal Batmanglij's AFI thesis short film
2009	Political Disasters	Brit	Short film
2011	Another Earth	Rhoda Williams	Also co-writer/producer San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Sitges Film Festival Award for Best Actress Nominated"?Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Performer Nominated"?Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature Nominated"?Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay Nominated"?Saturn Award for Best Actress Nominated"?Saturn Award for Best Writing
	Sound of My Voice	Maggie	Also co-writer/producer Nominated"?Georgia Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated"?Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature Nominated"?Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female
2012	Arbitrage	Brooke Miller
2013	The East	Sarah Moss/Jane Owen	Also co-writer/producer
	The Company You Keep	Rebecca Osborne
2014	The Better Angels	Nancy Lincoln
	I Origins	Karen
	The Keeping Room	Augusta
	Posthumous	McKenzie Grain
2016	The Wife	Young Joan Castleman

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Community	Paige	Episode: "Early 21st Century Romanticism"
2014	Babylon	Liz Garvey	7 episodes
2016	The OA	Prairie Johnson	8 episodes