Alison Brie

Alison Brie Schermerhorn, known professionally as Alison Brie, is an American actress, writer, and producer whose career has spanned prestige television, cult comedy, independent cinema, and studio features. Born on December 29, 1982, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and raised in the nearby community of South Pasadena, she grew up in an artistic household steeped in music and performance. Her mother worked at an infant and preschool center and sang in local bands, while her father worked as a musician and entertainment reporter. Her parents divorced when she was young, and Brie has spoken about attending a Jewish summer camp and later a Jewish day school, experiences that shaped her sense of community long before she began performing professionally.

Brie caught the acting bug early, appearing in children's theater productions and eventually attending the California Institute of the Arts, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting in 2005. A semester abroad at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow further sharpened her theatrical instincts. After graduating, she spent several lean years performing at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, working as a clown at children's birthday parties, and booking the kinds of small television and film roles that typically precede a breakthrough. Those early credits included guest spots and independent features that, while modest, demonstrated her willingness to take on anything that would keep her working.

Her breakthrough came in 2007 when she was cast as Trudy Campbell, the poised and occasionally steely wife of ambitious ad man Pete Campbell, in Matthew Weiner's acclaimed period drama Mad Men. Initially conceived as a recurring role, Trudy became a fan favorite across the show's entire run through 2015, giving Brie a front-row seat to one of the defining prestige dramas of the twenty-first century. The following year, in 2009, she landed the role that would cement her comedic reputation. As Annie Edison on Dan Harmon's NBC sitcom Community, Brie played an overachieving, neurotic, and disarmingly sweet former high-school valedictorian navigating community college alongside an unforgettable ensemble. The show's six-season run on NBC and Yahoo Screen, from 2009 to 2015, turned her into a touchstone for a generation of comedy fans and established her versatility; she could anchor a dramatic scene on one network on a Sunday night and deliver high-concept physical comedy on another on a Thursday.

While Community and Mad Men were still airing, Brie expanded her film resume with roles in The Five-Year Engagement, Scream 4, Get Hard, The Post, and Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, and she voiced Diane Nguyen on the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman from 2014 to 2020, arguably the most emotionally demanding voice performance of her career. Diane, a ghostwriter wrestling with ambition, depression, and identity, gave Brie a showcase for the kind of interior work that often eludes animated characters and contributed to the show's reputation as one of the most serious comedies of its era.

In 2017, Brie took on her most physically transformative role to date as Ruth Wilder, known in the ring as Zoya the Destroya, on Netflix's GLOW. The 1980s-set dramedy about the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling asked her to train as a wrestler, perform her own stunts, and carry a complicated friendship-and-betrayal storyline at the heart of the ensemble. The performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and the show ran for three acclaimed seasons before Netflix canceled a planned fourth during the pandemic, a decision that remains a sore point for fans.

Brie's ambitions extended beyond acting. In 2020, she co-wrote and starred in Horse Girl, a Netflix psychological drama directed by her frequent collaborator Jeff Baena about a lonely craft-store employee whose grip on reality begins to slip. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and signaled a new phase in her career as a writer and producer willing to tackle material drawn partly from her own family's history with mental illness. She continued that creative partnership with Baena on The Little Hours and Spin Me Round, the 2022 comedy she co-wrote and starred in opposite Aubrey Plaza and Alessandro Nivola, a tart send-up of Italian-vacation escapism and the fantasies sold to service-industry workers. She also produced and starred in the 2023 romantic comedy Somebody I Used to Know, which she co-wrote with her husband, and appeared in Lena Dunham's Sharp Stick the previous year.

In 2024 she led the Peacock limited series Apples Never Fall, an adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel, playing Amy Delaney, the eldest daughter of a tennis-coaching family thrown into chaos when their mother disappears. Acting opposite Sam Neill and Annette Bening, Brie anchored the ensemble's emotional register and reminded audiences of the dramatic range she first demonstrated on Mad Men more than fifteen years earlier. She has continued to balance studio work, streaming features, and passion projects, with ongoing ambitions as a writer and producer that suggest a long second act behind the camera as well as in front of it.

Off-screen, Brie has been married to actor Dave Franco since 2017, after a six-year courtship that began when the two met at a Mardi Gras party in 2011. The couple have collaborated repeatedly, most notably on The Rental, Franco's 2020 directorial debut, a horror thriller in which Brie starred, and on Somebody I Used to Know, which Franco directed. They have spoken publicly about their decision not to have children, and they are known in the industry for a quietly prolific creative partnership that spans writing, directing, producing, and acting. Brie has also been candid about her experiences with anxiety, body image, and the pressures of the industry, and she has used interviews and her writing to advocate for more honest depictions of women's inner lives on screen. With a body of work that already includes two era-defining television shows, a voice-acting landmark, and a growing catalogue of films she helped bring into existence, Alison Brie has built a career defined less by a single signature role than by the stubborn, curious intelligence she brings to everything she touches.