Olivia Jo Thirlby (born October 6, 1986) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Leah in the comedy-drama film Juno (2007), as Natalie in The Darkest Hour (2011) and as Judge Cassandra Anderson in Dredd (2012). In 2023, Thirlby portrayed Lilli Hornig in Christopher Nolan's biographical film Oppenheimer.
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Early life
Thirlby was born on October 6, 1986, in New York City, to an advertising executive mother and a contractor father. She was raised in Manhattan's East Village, attending school at Friends Seminary in the city's Gramercy neighborhood, where she graduated in a class of 57 students. She also attended French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in upstate New York, and Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. She took classes at the American Globe Theatre, and briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London where she completed a stage combat course with the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat (BASSC).
Career
While in high school, Thirlby had a role in The Secret. In 2006, she made her film debut in United 93 and her television debut in Kidnapped.
In 2007, she played Leah in Juno. Around this time, she and her Juno co-star Elliot Page were slated to star as the respective title characters of Jack & Diane as two young women who fall in love which unlocked lycanthropy in one character but both dropped out before production, and the cast was replaced numerous times over. She plays Stephanie, a marijuana-smoking "popular girl" from New York City, in Sundance Audience Award-winning mid-1990s period piece film The Wackness, which was released in the U.S. on July 3, 2008, and stars opposite Josh Peck.
