Geraldine Viswanathan

Geraldine Viswanathan (birthname: Geraldine Indira Viswanathan) is an Australian-born actor who has built a reputation as a skilled comedy performer. Viswanathan’s feature debut was a supporting role in the Australian indie high school comedy, Emo the Musical (2016), premiering at the Melbourne Film Festival, followed by a supporting role in her first American indie, All Out Dysfunktion! (2016).

Viswanathan’s breakout role arrived with the sex comedy, Blockers (2018), starring Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Newton, and John Cena under Kay Cannon’s direction, and grossing $94 million globally. In her first starring feature role and one of her few dramatic roles, Geraldine Viswanathan played the title role in director/writer/producer Minhal Baig’s indie drama, Hala (2019), with Jack Kilmer, Gabriel Luna, and Anna Chlumsky, which premiered in the Sundance film festival before theatrical distribution and streaming by Apple Original Films.

Viswanathan had her second starring role in a feature with writer-director Natalie Krinsky’s rom-com, The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020), with Dacre Montgomery, Phillipa Soo, and Bernadette Peters, and which lost money for TriStar Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing ($4.8 million gross). Viswanathan continued her run as a star of rom-com comedies with co-writer/director Roshan Sethi’s 7 Days (2021), opposite Karan Soni and Mark Duplass, and premiering at the Tribeca film festival before a modest Cinedigm release.

Geraldine Viswanathan was cast by director Susanna Fogel in the comedy-drama based on Kristen Roupenian’s New Yorker short story, Cat Person (2023), starring Emilia Jones, Nicholas Braun, Hope Davis, Fred Melamed, and Isabella Rossellini, premiering at the Sundance film festival, and released by Rialto Pictures. Viswanathan co-starred with Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, and Sarah Snook in The Beanie Bubble (2023), co-directed by Kristin Gore (who wrote the script) and Damian Kulash Jr., and produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Karen Lunder, and released by Apple TV+ in theaters and on streaming.

Viswanathan then co-starred with Margaret Qualley in Ethan Coen’s crime comedy, Drive-Away Dolls (2024), with Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon, and Miley Cyrus, and released by Focus Features/Universal. Geraldine Viswanathan co-starred opposite Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon (who are also producers) in writer-director Nicholas Stoller’s wedding comedy, You’re Cordially Invited (date to be announced), from Amazon MGM Studios.

Viswanathan landed a role in her first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, Thunderbolts (2025), directed by Jake Schreier and starring Sebastian Stan, Hannah John-Kamen, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Olga Kurylenko, Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, and Rachel Weisz.