Evan Rachel Wood (born September 7, 1987) is an American actress, singer, and activist. She is the recipient of a Critics' Choice Television Award as well as three Primetime Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations for her work in film and television.
She began acting in the 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic (1995–96) and Once and Again (1999–2002). She made her debut as a leading film actress at the age of nine in Digging to China (1997) and garnered acclaim for her Golden Globe-nominated role as the troubled teenager Tracy Freeland in the teen drama film Thirteen (2003). She continued acting mostly in independent films, including Pretty Persuasion (2005), Down in the Valley (2005), Running with Scissors (2006), and Across the Universe (2007).
Since 2008, Wood has appeared in more mainstream films, including The Wrestler (2008), Whatever Works (2009), and The Ides of March (2011). She returned to television the following year in the recurring role of Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the vampire Queen of Louisiana, on True Blood from 2009 to 2011. She also portrayed the title character's malicious daughter in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe and Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She starred as sentient android Dolores Abernathy in the HBO series Westworld (2016–2022), for which she won a Critics' Choice Award and earned Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations. She also voiced Queen Iduna in the Disney animated fantasy film Frozen II (2019).
Early life and family
Wood was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her mother, Sara Lynn Moore, is an actress, director, and acting coach who converted to Judaism and raised her daughter in the Jewish faith. Her father, Ira David Wood III, is an actor, theater director and playwright prominent in Raleigh, where he is the co-founder and executive director of a community theatre company called Theatre in the Park. Wood's brother, Ira David Wood IV, is also an actor; she has two other brothers, Dana and Thomas, and a sister named Aden. Her paternal aunt, Carol Winstead Wood, was a production designer in Hollywood.
Wood was actively involved in Theatre in the Park while growing up, including an appearance in the 1987 production of her father's musical comedy adaptation of A Christmas Carol when she was just a few months old. She subsequently played the Ghost of Christmas Past in several productions there, and starred as Helen Keller alongside her mother (as Anne Sullivan) in The Miracle Worker, under her father's direction.
She attended Cary Elementary School in Cary, North Carolina, where she starred in its production of The Little Mermaid. When her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to her mother's native Los Angeles in 1997 to further her acting career. She attended public school in California before leaving at age 12 for homeschooling. She received her high school diploma at 15. Wood said she earned a black belt in taekwondo when she was 12, and that she participated in the AAU Junior Olympic Games.
