If you've been hearing a lot about Samara Weaving lately, you're not alone. The 27-year-old Australian actress and model recently earned praise for her performance in the 2019 comedy-horror filmReady or Not. In the critically acclaimed movie, Weaving played Grace, a bride trying to survive her wedding night as she's hunted by her brand-new wealthy in-laws. And now that she'll be playing Thea Preston, daughter of Bill (Alex Winter), in the much-anticipated movieBill & Ted Face the Music this summer, it's clear there's nothing Weaving can't do.
To help you get further acquainted, here's everything we know about Samara Weaving, one of Hollywood's hottest rising stars of 2020.
She got into acting to overcome her shyness.
In spite of making her mark as an uninhibited, door-busting heroine in Ready or Not, Weaving said she actually got into acting in order to help overcome her shyness growing up. She struggled to adjust as her family moved from Australia to Italy and throughout Asia, to Singapore, Fiji, and Indonesia.
In 2019, she told Collider that it took "a long time to make friends and settle into these new countries and places." So her parents thought acting might help her break out of her shell a bit. Turns out, it worked! "You kind of break the ice as a kid and you’re playing make-believe on stage," she said. "And it was a good way to make friends."
And she got her start on two Australian TV shows.
Weaving first arrived on the radar of many Americans after scoring a small role in the Oscar-nominated filmThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017. But she began her acting career on the Aussie television series Out of the Blue in 2008 and got her big break in her home country on the soap opera Home and Away, on which she starred from 2009 to 2013.
You probably know her uncle, Huge Weaving.
If you've seen The Matrix trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or Captain America: The First Avenger, you probably know Weaving's uncle Hugo Weaving. (He played Agent Smith in The Matrix movies, Elrond in LOTR, and Red Skull in Captain America.) "Obviously my uncle is a fantastic actor and I really look up to him," Weaving told Birth.Movies.Death. in 2017. "I love seeing him in the theater, on stage, and of course, The Matrix is amazing." The two have done one film together, the 2013 Australian crime thriller Mystery Road.
She's in a movie with Daniel Radcliffe.
Up next for Weaving is the action-comedy Guns Akimbo, which hits theaters in the U.S. on Mar. 5. In the film, Weaving plays Nix, a trigger-happy, motorbike-riding killer at the top of her game. "I had tattoos all over my hands and face and I had a black and silver mullet and no eyebrows," she told Bloody Disgusting in 2019 of her transformation for the role. "It took like four or five hours to get into makeup, so I'd just go home with it on. ... People would run away. I'd try and buy groceries and they would look very concerned."
Her co-star in Guns Akimbo is Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Miles, a nerdy video game developer who has to go head-to-head with Nix when he unwittingly gets caught up in an illegal real-life death match that's streamed online to great popularity. (Yes, the trailer is just as wild as you'd expect.)
She's starring in a G.I. Joe movie.
Weaving is continuing her streak as a fearsome rebel in the G.I. Joe spin-off Snake Eyes, which is currently in production. The movie tells the origin story of the eponymous character (played by Nicholas Cage), with Weaving playing the traditionally red-haired counter-intelligence officer Scarlett, whose weapon of choice is a crossbow. Her motto? "Beauty may only be skin deep, but lethal is to the bone."
And she's going to be on a Netflix TV show.
Apparently three movies in a year isn't enough to keep Weaving busy. She's also joined Ryan Murphy's upcoming Netflix series Hollywood. In addition to Weaving, the cast includes Jeremy Pope, Darren Criss, Patti LuPone, Holland Taylor, Dylan McDermott, Jim Parsons, and Maude Apatow. Not much is known about Weaving's role just yet besides the fact that her character's name is Claire. According to a report from Deadline, Murphy calls Hollywood “a love letter to the Golden Age of Tinseltown" and it's set in the 1940s.
She's a model for Louis Vuitton.
On top of all of that acting work, Weaving has also been featured in Louis Vuitton's recent ad campaigns, the latest of which is for the Pre-Fall 2020 collection. Fellow actresses Thandie Newton, Michelle Williams, Sophie Turner, and Alicia Vikander are some of the other big names celebrating the power of feminine strength in the new campaign.
She's prepared for the Margot Robbie comparisons.
In her couple of years in Hollywood, Weaving has garnered attention for her resemblance to fellow Aussie actress Margot Robbie, but it's something she takes in stride. “[She’s] really lovely. She’s a great actress. I’m flattered that people mistake me for her. That’s a great compliment," Weaving told The Sunday Times in 2018. But, she added, "I hope that people realize pitting two women against each other is just silly.”
