Ariana DeBose

Ariana DeBose (birthname: Ariana Nicole DeBose) made history as the first queer woman of color to win an Academy Award when she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in West Side Story (2021). DeBose belongs to that elite class of performers (in the tradition of Fred Astaire, Shirley MacLaine, and Rita Moreno) who can act, sing, and dance.

DeBose’s debut big-screen appearance was as part of the ensemble in the movie version of Stephen Sondheim’s and George Furth’s musical, Company (2011), directed by Lonny Price, and co-starring Neil Patrick Harris, Martha Plimpton, Stephen Colbert, Jon Cryer, Patti LuPone, and Christina Hendricks. Ariana DeBose then had her first starring role in writer-director Sam Zalutsky’s little-seen indie drama, Seaside (2018).

DeBose scored a triple role (The Bullet, Martha, and in the ensemble) in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s and Jeffrey Seller’s game-changing musical, Hamilton (2020), directed for the camera by Thomas Kail, and co-starring Leslie Odom Jr., Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs, Anthony Ramos, and Jonathan Groff. DeBose had a relatively larger role with a starry ensemble in producer-director Ryan Murphy’s movie version of the Matthew Solar/Chad Beguelin/Bob Martin musical, Prom (2020), with Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Keegan-Michael Key, Tracy Ullman, Mary Kay Place, and Kerry Washington, and which was released in a brief theatrical window before streaming on Netflix.

Ariana DeBose’s breakthrough role arrived years into her film career—though in only her first major role in a major wide-release studio production—when she took on the role of Anita in director Steven Spielberg’s and writer Tony Kushner’s new version of West Side Story (2021) and won the same Oscar won sixty years earlier by Rita Moreno in the same role. DeBose’s cast mates included Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, David Alvarez, Mike Faust, Moreno, Brian d’Arcy James, and Corey Stoll, and though Spielberg’s movie received much praise, it was one of his box-office bombs with a $76 million global return on a $100 million budget.

In a major shift, DeBose then opted for a sci-fi movie project, I.S.S. (2023), directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and co-starring Chris Messina, Pilou Asbæk, John Gallagher Jr., and Maria Mashkova, and released by Bleeker Street. DeBose returned to the musical mode in her first starring role (and first voice role in an animated project) in a studio movie with Disney’s Wish (2023), co-directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, and co-starring Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, and Angelique Cabral.

Ariana DeBose joined the cast of director-producer Matthew Vaughn’s $200-million spy comedy, Argylle (2024), including Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, John Cena, and Samuel L. Jackson, and released by Universal Pictures and Apple Original Films. DeBose co-starred in her first Marvel movie and the fifth Spider-Man Universe movie, Kraven the Hunter (2024), starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger, Christopher Abbott, and Alessandro, and directed by J.C. Chandor.