Alison Brie

Alison Brie (birthname: Alison Brie Schermerhorn) may be best known to audiences as Trudy on the lauded cable series, Mad Men (2007-2015), and Annie on NBC’s acclaimed comedy, Community (2009-2015), but she has also built a feature film career since 2007, when she debuted in the indie film, Dickie Smalls: From Shame to Fame (2007), written and directed by Ryan Hixson and Vick Smith.

Brie earned the starring role in the Richard Friedman-directed horror movie, Born (2007), with Joan Severance, Kane Hodder, and Denise Crosby. After a supporting role in director-writer Lena Pendharkar’s well-received festival film, Raspberry Magic (2010), with Lily Javherpour, Bella Thorne, and Ravi Kapoor, Alison Brie landed a role in her first major release with Wes Craven’s Scream 4 (2011), starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Anthony Anderson, and Rory Culkin, and returning a modest profit with $97 million globally, the lowest gross in the Scream franchise.

Brie was the co-star in co-writer/director Michael Mohan’s comedy-drama, Save the Date (2012), with Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr, and Mark Webber, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by IFC Films. Alison Brie first appeared in a studio-backed movie with the Judd Apatow-produced rom-com for Universal Pictures, The Five-Year Engagement (2012), from writer/producer/director Nicholas Stoller, and co-starring Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Rhys Ifans, and Chris Pratt.

Brie co-starred in the D.G. Brock-directed indie black comedy, The Misadventures of the Dunderheads (2012), with Olympia Dukakis and Haley Joel Osment, and then Brie played a supporting role in another indie film, The Kings of Summer (2013), with Nick Robinson, Moisés Arias, Gabriel Basso, and Nick Offerman, and released by CBS Films after a Sundance film festival premiere.

Brie jumped aboard her biggest movie project to date, Phil Lord’s and Christopher Miller’s hilarious animated hit for Warner Bros. and Warner Animation Group, The Lego Movie (2014), as part of a voice cast including Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Offerman, Liam Neeson, and Morgan Freeman, and grossing $468 million, and yet—despite being the year’s most critically acclaimed animated feature—was not nominated for the best animation feature Oscar.

Alison Brie co-starred with Jason Sudeikis in director-writer Leslie Headland’s rom-com, Sleeping with Other People (2015), with Natasha Lynne, Amanda Peet, and Adam Scott, which was released by IFC Films after a Sundance film festival premiere. Brie reunited with Ferrell, along with Kevin Hart, Tip “T.I.” Harris, and Craig T. Nelson, in debuting co-writer/director Etan Cohen’s crime comedy for Warner Bros., Get Hard (2015), grossing $112 million globally following a premiere at SXSW.

Brie starred in the Nick Wernham-directed Canadian rom-com, No Stranger Than Love (2015), with Justin Chatwin and Colin Hanks, released by Orion Pictures, followed by Brie taking a supporting role in writer-director Jeff Baena’s Joshy (2016), with Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, Nick Kroll, Jenny Slate, and Lauren Graham, and receiving a Lionsgate Premiere release after a Sundance film festival competition premiere.

Alison Brie co-starred with Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Leslie Mann, Damon Wayans Jr., Anders Holm, and Nicholas Braun in the Christian Ditter-directed rom-com for Warner Bros., How to Be Single (2016), earning a sold $112 million globally. Brie played a supporting role alongside Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Marcia Gay Harden, Bryan Cranston, Braun, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse in the little-seen comedy, Get a Job (released in 2016, but filmed in 2012). Brie landed another supporting role, but this time in a drama, A Family Man (2016), starring Gerard Butler, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Gretchen Mol, and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival.

Alison Brie was cast by Steven Spielberg in his sober-minded Pentagon Papers drama, The Post (2017), starring Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, and Matthew Rhys, grossing $180 million globally and earning Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Alison Brie reunited as co-star with writer-director Jeff Baena for the black comedy, The Little Hours (2017), loosely based on a section of Boccaccio’s The Decameron, co-starring Dave Franco, Kate Micucci, Aubrey Plaza, John C. Reilly, and Molly Shannon, and premiering at the Sundance film festival.

Brie continued working with (husband) Dave Franco in The Disaster Artist (2017), brother James Franco’s most successful movie (possibly one of the worst ever made, The Room (2003)), with Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver, and Seth Rogen, and after a SXSW premiere turned in a strong $30 million globally. Brie performed in the voice cast for the English-language version of writer-director Makoto Shinkai’s animated romance for Toho, Weathering with You (2019), with Ashley Boettcher, Lee Pace, Mike Pollack, and Riz Ahmed.

Alison Brie revived her role as Princess Unikitty in the sequel, The Lego Movie: The Second Part (2019), this time directed by Mike Mitchell with creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller co-writing the script, and with new voice cast members Stephanie Beatriz, Tiffany Haddish, and Maya Rudolph; the movie’s global gross was an underperforming $200 million and was once again ignored by the Academy Awards. Brie took on a major supporting role in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s black comedy, Promising Young Woman (2020), starring Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Clancy Brown, Molly Shannon, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, and Laverne Cox, and winning the best original screenplay Oscar.

Alison Brie expanded her filmmaking roles beyond acting to include screenwriting and producing with Netflix’s Horse Girl (2020), in which she starred; Spin Me Round (2022), in which Brie starred and co-wrote and co-produced with director Jeff Baena, which co-starred Alessandro Nivola, Aubrey Plaza, Shannon, and Lil Rel Howery, and released by IFC Films after a SXSW festival premiere; and Amazon’s Somebody I Used to Know (2023), which Brie co-wrote with director Dave Franco and played lead opposite Jay Ellis and Kiersey Clemons.

Brie co-starred in director/writer/producer Franco’s IFC Films-released horror movie, The Rental (2020), with Dan Stevens, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, and Toby Huss, becoming the second film ever to top both theatrical release and video-on-demand charts on the same weekend. Brie jumped into the action genre with co-star John Cena in Freelance (2023), directed by Pierre Morel, and released by Relativity. Brie had a reunion with Community cast mates for the feature version, Community: The Movie (2024), with Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs, Joel McHale, Ken Jeong, Jim Rash, and Danny Pudi.