Thomasin Mckenzie

McKenzie was born 26 July 2000 in Wellington, New Zealand, and attended Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington's Karori suburb, graduating in 2018. Her parents are actress and acting coach Dame Miranda Harcourt, and director Stuart McKenzie. She is the granddaughter of actress Dame Kate Harcourt and Peter Harcourt, whose family founded the real estate company Harcourts International in Wellington. She has an elder brother, Peter McKenzie, and a younger sister, actress Davida McKenzie. After appearing with her brother in the film Existence (2012), McKenzie portrayed teenager Louise Nicholas in the television film Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story (2014). In 2015, she played Pixie Hannah in the soap opera Shortland Street. The following year, she played the titular character in the children's comedy web series Lucy Lewis Can't Lose. She gained recognition for her portrayal as a daughter of a war veteran in Debra Granik's Leave No Trace (2018). Her performance received critical acclaim and won her the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance. In 2019, McKenzie joined the ensemble cast of Netflix's The King as Queen Philippa of Denmark, starring alongside Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Robert Pattinson. She next played the role of a young Jewish girl who hides in the home of the title character in Taika Waititi's satirical comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit (2019) which she obtained a nomination at the Critics' Choice Movie Award as Best Young Actress. In August 2018, McKenzie was cast in Top Gun: Maverick, but dropped out of the film after signing onto Lost Girls (2020). In 2021, she starred in the M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Old, and played the lead character in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, opposite Anya Taylor-Joy. In the same year, she joined John Crowley's televised adaptation of Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life for BBC Two, which premiered in 2022. In 2023, McKenzie joined the main cast of the second season of Pantheon, a science fiction drama adaptation of the series of short stories by Ken Liu, voicing MIST, the first C.I. (computational intelligence) born of U.I. (uploaded intelligence). In the same year, she played the lead character in the William Oldroyd's psychological thriller Eileen, opposite Anne Hathaway and will portray American gymnast Kerri Strug in Olivia Wilde's Perfect. McKenzie will portray English embryologist Jean Purdy in the upcoming 2024 film Joy, based on the true story of the world’s first in vitro fertilisation baby. In May 2023, McKenzie joined in the lead role for Mona Fastvold's upcoming psychological horror Self-Portrait. In the same month, McKenzie joined Andrew Niccol's upcoming live-action animated film I, Object. In September 2023, McKenzie joined Jim O'Hanlon's upcoming British period comedy Fackham Hall, written by comedian Jimmy Carr.