Amber Tamblyn

Her feature film work includes roles such as Tibby Rollins from the first two The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants films and Megan McBride in 127 Hours (2010), as well as appearing opposite Tilda Swinton in Stephanie Daley, which debuted at The Sundance Film Festival and for which Tamblyn won Best Actress at The Locarno International Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2016, she made her directorial debut with the film Paint It Black starring Alia Shawkat, based on Janet Fitch's 2006 novel of the same name. In 2021, she starred opposite Diane Lane in FX's Y: The Last Man. Tamblyn is a published author and cultural critic at large. She has published seven books across genres, and writes for The New York Times and other publications on issues of gender inequality and women's suffrage.

Amber Tamblyn is the daughter of singer/artist Bonnie Tamblyn and actor Russ Tamblyn. Her paternal grandfather, Eddie Tamblyn, was a vaudeville performer. Her uncle was Larry Tamblyn, the keyboardist in the rock band The Standells. She attended the Santa Monica Alternative School House. At age ten, she played Pippi Longstocking in a school play; her father's agent, Sharon Debord, was attending as a family friend and convinced her father to allow Tamblyn to go on auditions.

Tamblyn's first TV role was Emily Bowen (later known as Emily Quartermaine) on the soap opera General Hospital, a role she played for six years (from 1995 to 2001). She also starred in "Evergreen", the pilot episode of the second The Twilight Zone revival in 2002. Tamblyn became better known playing Joan Girardi, a teenage girl who receives frequent visits from God, on the CBS drama series Joan of Arcadia. Tamblyn's father made several appearances as God in the form of a dog walker on the show, which ran from 2003 to 2005. Early guest-starring roles include Buffy the Vampire Slayer (playing Janice Penshaw, the best friend of Michelle Trachtenberg's character Dawn Summers), Boston Public, CSI: Miami, and Punk'd, where Ashton Kutcher and his crew members tricked her into losing someone else's dog. In 2007, she starred in the pilot for Babylon Fields, an apocalyptic comedic drama about the undead trying to resume their former lives. CBS excluded the show from its fall programming lineup, since it would have competed with the network's other undead-themed drama, Moonlight. In 2009, Tamblyn starred in The Unusuals as NYPD homicide detective Casey Shraeger. The show was canceled after its first season. The same year, she had a recurring role alongside her future husband David Cross in the IFC sitcom The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. From November 2010 to April 2011, she starred as medical student Martha M. Masters in the seventh season of the Fox medical drama series House. She returned for the series finale in 2012. In August 2013, Tamblyn was cast as Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen)'s long-lost (and previously unknown) lesbian daughter, Jenny Harper, on the sitcom Two and a Half Men, opposite Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer. Her first appearance was on the season 11 opener, September 26, 2013. She has appeared on numerous episodes of Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer. She has also guest starred on IFC's Portlandia and Comedy Bang! Bang!, as well as numerous shows on Adult Swim, including The Heart, She Holler and Metalocalypse. In 2021, Tamblyn starred opposite Diane Lane in the critically acclaimed FX television series Y: The Last Man, based on the graphic novel.

Tamblyn attended a grade school for the theatrical arts from age 5 to 14. She was discovered as an actress at age 9 when she starred in Pippi Longstocking. In 2014, she originated the role of Daisy Domergue for the live reading at the Ace Theater in Los Angeles of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. She was hand picked by Tarantino, a longtime friend, along with fellow cast members Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and others. Tamblyn starred in Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty at the Geffen Playhouse in 2014, which received critical acclaim. Tamblyn serves on the board of directors for Soho Rep Theater in New York.

In a series of September 2017 tweets later reiterated in an open letter published in Teen Vogue, Tamblyn said that actor James Woods tried to seduce her and a friend at a restaurant and offered to take them to Las Vegas when she and her friend were 16. Woods denied her allegations, calling them a "lie". Tamblyn later wrote an essay for The New York Times in which she said that Woods's "accusation that I was lying sent me back to that day in that producer's office, and back to all the days I've spent in the offices of men; of feeling unsure, uneasy, questioned and disbelieved, no matter the conversation." In March 2018, Tamblyn was criticized for tweets about New York City's Hasidic Jewish community after an incident in Brooklyn involving her daughter. Tamblyn said she was nearly struck by a van driven by a Hasidic Jewish man while walking with her daughter in a stroller. She said "this is not the first time a man from the Hasidic community in NYC has attempted to harm me or other women I know. Any woman riding a bike through South Williamsburg can attest. I hope this guy is caught." In Tablet, journalist Liel Leibovitz chided Tamblyn for "speaking so hurtfully about an entire community of underprivileged people". Tamblyn denied accusations of antisemitism.

Tamblyn and actor-comedian David Cross became engaged in August 2011, and married on October 6, 2012. On February 21, 2017, Tamblyn announced that she and Cross had recently had a daughter. She is sometimes said to be the goddaughter of musician Neil Young and actors Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper, although in a 2009 interview with Parade, Tamblyn explained that "godfather" was "just a loose term" for Stockwell, Hopper, and Young, three friends of her father's who were always around the house when she was growing up and were big influences on her. She was the writing mentee of the late San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman.

Tamblyn supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election. On social media, she urged voters to check voter ID requirements, citing VoteRiders as a source of assistance. She is one of the founders of the nonprofit organization Time's Up, which was created to combat workplace sexual harassment. In October 2023, Tamblyn signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to President Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. In September 2025, Tamblyn was criticized for her comments on Bluesky in response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Referring to the Newsweek article "Trump Ally Charlie Kirk Suggests Children Should Watch Public Executions", she responded with "Wish Granted".

In June 2021, Tamblyn wrote an essay in The New York Times expressing solidarity with Britney Spears's effort to end the conservatorship controlling her life. Tamblyn wrote that she became financially successful when she turned 21 and starred in Joan of Arcadia, after which her father became her co-manager and her mother her business manager. She wrote that having her parents on the payroll damaged their relationship, and that her money "paid for our vacations, dinners out, and sometimes even the bills. When it finally came time to disentangle our personal and professional relationships, it was deeply painful for all three of us". But Tamblyn wrote that she, unlike Spears, "had a healthy and loving relationship with my parents, for the most part" and her parents "were supportive and ethical in every way". When the "circle of those I supported opened up to include extended family members and friends. I was the one they came to for a small loan or in an emergency, the one who always picked up the check", "using money to make people happy, or fix problems, or appease my guilt", she recounted that she felt like "everybody's ATM: a bank that was, nonetheless, unconditionally loved".