Anna Chlumsky

Anna Chlumsky plays journalist Vivian Kent in Inventing Anna. Vivian needs answers from a subject who prefers to control the conversation. Chlumsky gives the exchanges impatience and professional curiosity, while letting the attraction of a valuable story complicate her judgment.

She first became widely known as Vada Sultenfuss in My Girl and returned for My Girl 2. Her later career took a markedly different direction with political comedy. In Armando Iannucci's In the Loop, she plays Liza, a State Department assistant navigating a world in which a careless sentence can develop a life of its own.

As Amy Brookheimer in Veep, Chlumsky became one of the key performers in an exceptionally sharp ensemble. She earned six supporting-actress Emmy nominations for the role. The performance turns professional competence into a source of frustration: Amy can see what ought to happen, but seeing it does not mean she can make everybody else cooperate.

Her dramatic television work includes Miriam Lass in Hannibal and Dr. Katie Herman in Halt and Catch Fire. These parts sit alongside the comedy rather than looking like attempts to escape it. Chlumsky's attention to reactions is useful in both; what another person has just said often matters as much as her reply.

Inventing Anna draws on that ability to stay active while listening. Julia Garner supplies a deliberately imposing subject, and Chlumsky keeps Vivian from becoming merely the person sitting opposite her. The reporting has professional stakes of its own, even when Anna would rather discuss something else.