Aubrey Plaza

Plaza made her film debut in Mystery Team (2009), had a supporting role in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), and her first leading film role in Safety Not Guaranteed (2012). She began producing in 2017, both producing and starring in the dark comedy films The Little Hours and Ingrid Goes West, and later the drama films Black Bear (2020) and Emily the Criminal (2022). Plaza starred in the critically praised FX series Legion from 2017–2019. She then starred in the second season of the HBO anthology series The White Lotus in 2022, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe Award.

• Birth Name — Aubrey Christina Plaza • Born — 26 June 1984 • Birthplace — Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. • Education — New York University (BFA) • Occupation — Actress, comedian, producer • Years Active — 2004–present • Works — Full list • Partner — Christopher Abbott (2025–present) • Children — 1

Aubrey Christina Plaza was born on June 26, 1984, in Wilmington, Delaware. She was born when her parents, Bernadette and David Plaza, were 19 and 20. Plaza said she was inspired by their work ethic, as they worked various jobs and attended night school while she was growing up, after which her mother became an attorney and her father a financial advisor. She has two younger sisters, Natalie and Renee. Her paternal family is Puerto Rican: her grandfather was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and moved to the mainland US when he was 17 years old. She has some Native American (Taíno) and Basque heritage. Plaza's mother, who was adopted, is of Irish descent; Plaza's maternal (adoptive) grandparents were from Ireland, where their family remained, and her grandfather was also adopted. She described herself as a shy child until middle school, when she discovered and began acting in community theater. Plaza said her upbringing was "very Catholic", and she attended Ursuline Academy, an all-girls Catholic school. While in high school, she was student-council president of her school, performed in theatrical productions with the Wilmington Drama League and the Delaware Theatre Company, and made short films as a hobby. At 16, she represented Ursuline at a Delaware youth leadership conference held by Joe Biden. As a teen, Plaza worked at a local video store, during which she discovered her love of independent films and filmmakers that inspired her, such as John Waters and Christopher Guest. Waters' satirical film Serial Mom (1994) made a significant impact on her, and she connected with his comedic sensibility. She also enrolled at an improv school in Philadelphia and, in 2001, attended New York Film Academy's summer camp for filmmaking. She graduated from high school the following year and moved to New York City. Plaza studied film and television production at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2006. While in college, at the age of 20, Plaza had a stroke which caused brief paralysis and temporary expressive aphasia, followed by a minor transient ischemic attack several years later.

• Illustration — Plaza at the Parks and Recreation premiere party in 2009 Plaza trained and performed improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre since 2004. She also performed at the Laugh Factory and The Improv. Plaza named Amy Poehler as an inspiration for her decision to perform improv. She described her experience at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre as "intoxicating", explaining: "It just truly felt like we are in an underground – literally, underground – theatre doing an art form that is so fucking hard, and just so fun when you get it right." While she was in film school, she had an internship at Saturday Night Live for the 2004–2005 season, and then became an NBC page. During this apprenticeship she appeared in an episode of 30 Rock in 2006. Though being a page at 30 Rockefeller Plaza was a lower position than her SNL internship, it is a "legendary" and highly selective program. She was also in two short films in 2006, Killswitch and In Love. In 2008, she was part of an Improv Everywhere sketch where she and others took an entire desktop computer and monitor to a Starbucks in New York City. Plaza had a recurring role in Maggie Carey's web series The Jeannie Tate Show, played the role of Robin Gibney in ESPN's Mayne Street (2008), and appeared in the first episode of "Terrible Decisions with Ben Schwartz" on Funny or Die. In 2009, she made her feature film debut in Derrick Comedy's Mystery Team. She then played a standup comic and Seth Rogen's love interest in the black comedy-drama film Funny People, directed by Judd Apatow. As she did not have experience performing standup, she signed up for open mic nights at comedy clubs and bars in New York City to prepare for the role. For her audition tape, she performed and recorded five minutes of standup comedy at her friend Donald Glover's standup show. When Plaza flew to Los Angeles for Funny People, the film's casting director Allison Jones asked her if she wanted to attend other meetings while she was in the city. Jones set up a meeting with Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who were developing Parks and Recreation. At the meeting, they told her the idea for the show's pilot and that they were considering giving Amy Poehler's character an assistant who was a doltish blonde. Plaza pitched them instead the character of a smart intern who is at the department only for college credit and does not care about the job, which Plaza thought would be an interesting, comedic contrast with Poehler's character. They liked the concept for the character and created April Ludgate. Plaza, who said that in real life she was like Poehler's earnestly hard-working character, took inspiration from her younger sister for April's apathetic disposition. Plaza played the role from 2009 to 2015. She received praise for her performance, and April was considered one of the show's breakout characters.

• Illustration — Plaza at WonderCon in 2019 In 2017, Plaza starred in and produced the films The Little Hours and Ingrid Goes West. The former is a black comedy about medieval nuns loosely based on stories from The Decameron. Both films premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In Ingrid Goes West, Plaza portrayed the social media obsessed fan of an influencer played by Elizabeth Olsen. Variety film critic Peter Debruge praised Plaza's performance writing: "Plaza's tortured performance captures all of this, which is saying something for an actress whose blasé persona hinges on the fact that she can't be bothered: Nobody plays ambivalence better, and yet, Plaza allows herself to seem vulnerable here." The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. The following year, she starred in the indie comedy An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn. From 2017 to 2019, Plaza portrayed both Amahl Farouk / Shadow King and Lenny Busker in the FX series Legion, which was critically praised along with Plaza's performance. The role of Lenny was originally written for a middle aged man. When Plaza was offered it, she requested that the character's dialogue and actions remain, as she did not want it "being tied down to anything gender-wise". David Bowie was an inspiration for her approach to the role. She was given creative freedom with the character and collaborated with directors and choreographers on sequences that were ambiguously described on the page. In 2019 and 2020, Plaza hosted the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2019, she starred in Child's Play, a reboot of the 1988 film, as Andy's mother who brings home a killer doll, Chucky. In 2020, Plaza played Riley Johnson in the romantic comedy Happiest Season, and produced and starred in the independent experimental thriller Black Bear, garnering critical acclaim for her performance. Black Bear follows a filmmaker who retreats to a cabin in the mountains to find inspiration for her next film. NME wrote that the film "examin[es] the power dynamics in filmmaking", and Collider considered it an exploration of "human relationships, gender dynamics, and celebrity". In 2021, Plaza wrote and made her directorial debut with the episode "Quiet Illness" of the Showtime anthology series Cinema Toast. Created by Jeff Baena, the series reinvents imagery from public domain films to tell different stories. In crafting "Quiet Illness", Plaza was inspired by actress Loretta Young's experiences and footage of her appearances. She edited various film and television clips starring Young into a psychological thriller about a woman's self-esteem, and cast Christina Ricci as a voice narrator. She described the project as "trippy" with a "pandemic-filming style". Plaza said that she has always had an interest in directing, and she had been writing a project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plaza produced and starred as the titular character in the independent film Emily the Criminal (2022), portraying a woman saddled with student debt and compelled into criminal activity. Her performance and the film received critical acclaim, with The New York Times calling it "wonderfully nuanced", Little White Lies writing that it is "perhaps Plaza’s best performance to date", and the Chicago Sun-Times deeming it "richly layered work" and "one of the best performances of the year in one of the best movies of the year". She also appeared in the film Spin Me Round, which premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in 2022. In the second season of the HBO anthology series The White Lotus, Plaza portrayed Harper, a lawyer vacationing in Sicily with her husband. For her performance in the series, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. In February 2022, Plaza contributed original poetry to Eating Salad Drunk, a comedian poetry anthology (edited by author Gabe Henry) that benefited Comedy Gives Back, a nonprofit supporting comedians facing financial hardship from the Covid-19 pandemic. On August 25, 2022, the adult animated sitcom Little Demon premiered on FXX, which features the voices of Plaza (who is also an executive producer), Danny DeVito, and Lucy DeVito. In October 2022, Plaza was given the Artist of Distinction Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival. At the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards, Plaza received a nomination for Best Lead Performance for Emily the Criminal, as well as a nomination for Best First Feature as producer. In January 2023, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time and appeared in multiple sketches. In July, it was announced that she would be making her stage debut in an off-Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, a two-hander about strangers who become lovers after meeting at a dive bar, opposite her Black Bear costar Christopher Abbott. She was nominated for the Drama League Distinguished Performance Award. Time magazine named Plaza one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. In 2024, Plaza and her Parks and Recreation costar Nick Offerman reunited in a Mountain Dew ad that aired during the Super Bowl LVIII broadcast. She was confirmed to be starring in John Waters's first film in over 20 years, Liarmouth, based on his novel of the same name. Plaza portrays the future self of Elliott Labrant in the comedy film My Old Ass (2024), and TV presenter Wow Platinum in Francis Ford Coppola's epic science fiction drama Megalopolis (2024). She portrayed Rio Vidal / Death in the Disney+ miniseries Agatha All Along, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which premiered on September 18, 2024. Plaza has co-written three children's books with Dan Murphy: The Legend of the Christmas Witch (2021), The Return of the Christmas Witch (2022), and Luna and the Witch Throw a Halloween Party (2025). In August 2025, it was announced that Plaza would produce and star in the upcoming biopic The Heidi Fleiss Story, in which she will portray former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. In April 2026, the adult animated series Kevin was released on Amazon Prime Video, which Plaza co-created, executive produced, and starred in, but in June 2026, Plaza announced Amazon Prime Video's decision to cancel Kevin after its first season. In May 2026, it was announced that she will star in the upcoming film Tomorrow Is a Drag, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.

Plaza met writer and director Jeff Baena at a game night in 2011, and they began a relationship. They became frequent collaborators, with Plaza starring in four of Baena's films. They married on their tenth anniversary in 2021. They quietly separated in September 2024, after which Plaza moved to New York but remained in frequent contact with Baena. On January 3, 2025, Baena died by suicide at his home in Los Angeles. As of 2026, Plaza lives in New York with her partner, actor Christopher Abbott. They met on the set of the film Black Bear, then reunited in the off-Broadway production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. In April 2026, it was announced that Plaza was pregnant with her and Abbott's first child. Their daughter was born in July 2026.

• Illustration — Plaza at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con According to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, Plaza's most critically acclaimed films include Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Ned Rifle (2014), Ingrid Goes West (2017), The Little Hours (2017), Black Bear (2020), Happiest Season (2020), Emily the Criminal (2022), and My Old Ass (2024). Her most critically acclaimed television projects include Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), Legion (2017–2019), Calls (2021), Little Demon (2022), The White Lotus (2022), Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023) and Agatha All Along (2024).

Aubrey Plaza is recorded at birth as Aubrey Christina Plaza. Recorded as having studied at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Ursuline Academy and New York Film Academy.