Kathryn Newton

Kathryn Newton (birthname: Kathryn Love Newton) is a rising actor best known for her roles in Paranormal Activity 4 (2012), the TV comedy Gary Unmarried (2008-2010), and HBO’s Big Little Lies (2017-2019).

After breaking into show business as a five-year-old child actor in shorts and TV, Newton had her first feature role as a 14-year-old in Bad Teacher (2011), directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, and Jason Segel, followed by Newton landing her first starring role in Paranormal Activity 4, co-directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, and with Matt Shively and Stephen Dunham, and proving to be a big hit for Paramount Pictures with a $143 million global gross.

Newton then co-starred with Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, and Jansen Panettiere in the indie martial arts movie, The Martial Arts Kid (2015). Kathryn Newton co-starred in the indie high school comedy, Mono (2016), followed by Newton being cast by writer-director Greta Gerwig in a small supporting role in Lady Bird (2017), starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, and Beanie Feldstein, and grossing a fine $79 million gross for A24/Universal/Focus after earning five Oscar nominations.

Newton landed a small role in another Oscar-winning movie with Martin McDonagh’s dark drama-comedy, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Hedges, and Abbie Cornish, earning a notable $163 million globally after premiering at the Venice film festival. Newton next earned a major supporting role in Universal Pictures’ sex comedy, Blockers (2018), directed by Kay Cannon and starring Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz, and grossing over four times costs with a $94 million take.

Newton reunited with Hedges (playing his sister) director-writer-producer Peter Hedges’s family drama, Ben is Back (2018), starring Julia Roberts and Courtney B. Vance, and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival. Newton co-starred with Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Suki Waterhouse, Ken Watanabe, and Bill Nighy in the first live-action Pokémon movie, Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019), directed by Rob Letterman and earning a profitable $450 million globally.

Kathryn Newton had her second starring role in Universal Pictures’ slasher black comedy, Freaky (2020), co-written and directed by Christopher Landon and co-starring Vince Vaughn, while grossing a mild $18 million. After starring in Amazon Prime’s sci-fi romance, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021), Newton got a major co-starring role in her first superhero movie with the Peyton Reed-directed Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, Corey Stoll, and Michael Douglas, but was the rare MCU movie to not break even with costs with a $476 million global gross.

Newton co-starred in producer-director Susanna Fogel’s black comedy biopic, Winner (2024), the second movie based on the Reality Winner espionage case, with Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, and Zach Galifianakis, and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Immediately after this premiere, Kathryn Newton appeared as the star of Focus Features/Universal Pictures’ horror comedy, Lisa Frankenstein (2024), directed by Zelda Williams and co-starring Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, and Carla Gugino.

Newton co-starred in a consecutive Universal horror movie, Abigail (2024), reimagining the studio’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936), with Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir, and Giancarlo Esposito under the direction of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.