Jena Laine Malone (; born November 21, 1984) is an American actress, musician, and photographer. She is known for her roles in both independent films and mainstream blockbuster features. Her accolades include a Saturn Award and nominations for a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Born in Sparks, Nevada, Malone spent her early life there and in Las Vegas, while her mother acted in local theater productions. Inspired to become an actress herself, Malone convinced her mother to relocate to Los Angeles. After auditioning for several projects, Malone was cast by Anjelica Huston in her television film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), for which she earned numerous accolades, including Screen Actors Guild and Independent Spirit Award nominations. She subsequently obtained roles in the major studio productions Contact (1997) and Stepmom (1998), for the former of which she earned a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. Malone appeared in the independent psychological thriller Donnie Darko (2001), which became a cult film, as well as the drama Life as a House, and the miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003). She subsequently starred in the dark comedy Saved! (2004) before being cast as Lydia Bennet in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (2005).
Malone continued to appear in both independent and mainstream features throughout the 2000s, with supporting roles in the dramas The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), Into the Wild (2007), and the horror film The Ruins (2008). In the late 2000s Malone ventured into music, releasing a single as Jena Malone and the Blood Stains in 2007. The following year she began performing street shows with a musical project called The Shoe, which features Malone performing with various instruments contained in a steamer trunk. She made her foray into action films with Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch (2011) and was subsequently cast as Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), a role she reprised in two sequels between 2014 and 2015; The Hunger Games franchise ranks among her highest-grossing film roles. She was then cast in supporting roles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s psychological horror film The Neon Demon and Tom Ford’s thriller Nocturnal Animals (both 2016).
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Early life
Malone was born on November 21, 1984, in Sparks, Nevada, the daughter of Deborah Malone and Edward Berge. Her daddy is of partly Norwegian descent; she afterward has Irish ancestry. According to Malone, her mom became pregnant behind her after a one-night stand similar to her father, who was married to another girl at the time. Malone was raised by her mother and her mother’s girlfriend. “They were lovers,” Malone has said. “I had two moms, and it was awesome.” She remained on bad terms from her father for much of her early life but reconciled similar to him in adulthood.
Malone grew taking place impoverished; her intimates relocated frequently and at mature was homeless. “We were just hence poor,” Malone has said. “We’d hop out of apartments, lose jobs, find a cheaper place, get kicked out, live in cars, and alive in hotels.” By the era she was nine years old, she had lived in 27 locations. Despite the frequent moves, Malone said, “I don’t think it was a tough childhood… it prepared me for this strange, gypsy lifestyle of an actor. It’s a beautiful matter to give children diversity of where to conscious and how to live; it makes you tolerate that security is built within then again of four concrete walls that you call a home.”
As a child, Malone first began taking an interest in acting though watching her mom perform in community theater in the Lake Tahoe area. In 1995 she moved to Las Vegas, where she resided gone her relatives for nine months, and began taking acting classes while her mom worked in a call center. She like persuaded her mom to change to Los Angeles for that reason she could pursue an acting career. Malone has said that she and her mommy struggled financially in Los Angeles. She was home-schooled from sixth to eighth grade and attended the Professional Children’s School in New York City for ninth grade. She has one younger maternal half-sibling, Madison Mae Malone (born 1997).
Personal life
In 2000, at age 15, after appearing in Contact and Stepmom, Jena Malone won genuine emancipation from her mom after accusing her of squandering Ms. Malone’s earnings through “excessive spending and mismanagement,” according to court papers.
In 2003, at age 19, Malone purchased a house in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where she resided as of 2012.
In May 2016, Malone gave birth to a son, Ode Mountain, with her boyfriend, photographer Ethan DeLorenzo. The couple announced their engagement on August 30, 2016. In February 2019, Malone and De Lorenzo the end their relationship.[citation needed]
Malone official Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Career
1990s: Early roles and child acting
Malone progressed to professional acting like the film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996). She was nominated at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Debut Performance and at the third Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for her role in the film. From there her roles grew to intensify several Hollywood features. In 1997 she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film for her role in the television film Hope (1997), portraying a young woman growing going on in a small town in the 1960s.
After completing Hope Malone was cast in Robert Zemeckis’s science fiction film Contact (1997), playing the child counterpart of Jodie Foster’s benefit character. For her portrayal she won a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. The taking into account year Malone was cast opposite Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts in the drama Stepmom (1998), playing an adolescent girl whose daddy has remarried and whose mother is dying of terminal cancer. The film was a bin office success, grossing over $150 million next to a $50 million budget. Malone played Heather Aubrey, the youth daughter of Kelly Preston in the 1999 movie, For Love of the Game, starring Kevin Costner. In 1999 Malone filed for real emancipation from her mommy in a Los Angeles County Court, and bearing in mind alleged that her mom had mismanaged her earnings, spending $280,000 of her trust account. She was granted legitimate emancipation in January 2000. After dropping out of high school in 1999, Malone obtained a General Educational Development certificate in 2001.
2000s: Independent films and other endeavors
Malone had her first cinematic leading role in the psychological science fiction thriller film Donnie Darko (2001), playing Gretchen Ross, the new girl in town who becomes the girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal’s title character. Though the film was not a box-office hit, it superior gained notoriety as a cult film. The thesame year she had a supporting allowance in the drama Life as a House (2001), portraying the girlfriend of a juvenile man (Hayden Christensen) whose ailing father (Kevin Kline) is building a home. Malone co-produced the independent comedy-drama American Girl (2002), the first feature in which she had top billing, co-starring bearing in mind Brad Renfro and Alicia Witt as a suicidal young girl whose father is in prison. In 2002 Malone played the part of a Catholic schoolgirl subsequently a throb secret opposite Emile Hirsch in The risky Lives of Altar Boys, also featuring Vincent D’Onofrio and Jodie Foster. In 2003, Jena appeared as “ferry girl” in Cold Mountain.
Malone had summit billing in the dark comedy Saved! (2004), in which she portrayed a Christian tall school student who discovers her boyfriend is gay. The same year she starred in the ecological-themed independent thriller film Corn, about a young woman who returns to her family’s farm to locate that their sheep are beast driven mad by corn modified to be immune to pesticides. Ronnie Scheib of Variety praised her performance, writing: “With Corn Jena Malone proves conclusively that she can carry a movie.”
Malone was next cast as Lydia Bennet in Joe Wright’s accommodation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (2005). Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, “Malone, as the saucy, boy-crazy youngest daughter, Lydia, offers an amusing caricature of youngster idiocy and entitlement.” The thesame year she had a supporting role in Rebecca Miller’s drama The Ballad of Jack and Rose.
In 2006 Malone made her Broadway stage debut as Sister James in a production of the Tony Award-winning play Doubt. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that Malone “slides effortlessly and appealingly into the part of the dewy, impressionable Sister James.” She furthermore appeared in films, co-starring with Chloë Sevigny in filmmaker M. Blash’s improvised feature Lying (2006), playing one of several women attending a precarious weekend gathering. Malone followed this bearing in mind supporting roles in the independent comedy The Go-Getter (2007), playing a young woman reunited as soon as her middle school crush, and the biographical drama Into the Wild (2007), in which she portrayed the sister of Chris McCandless.
In 2007 it was announced that Malone was releasing her first single on The Social Registry, a New York City experimental music label, as Jena Malone and the Bloodstains. A number of tracks were in imitation of posted to her MySpace page. Pitchfork Media has described Malone’s music as “pretty out-there—bedroom electronics, spaced-out keyboards, and Malone’s spare vocals.” In 2008 she formed the musical project The Shoe, which features Malone performing with a series of electronic instruments contained within a steamer trunk. She began substitute impromptu stimulate shows on street corners in 2008.
Malone appeared in the supernatural horror film The Ruins (2008) opposite Shawn Ashmore and Jonathan Tucker, playing one of several backpackers in Mexico who become trapped on a Mayan temple teeming later than vines that can animated and antagonism those who come into get into with them. The gone year she returned to theater, portraying Lavinia in an off-Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s play Mourning Becomes Electra, opposite Lili Taylor.
2010s: Mainstream features and current work
In 2011 Malone played the role of Rocket in Zack Snyder’s comport yourself film Sucker Punch. The film’s public notice failure caused Malone to reevaluate her career and consider focusing upon photography and music. After the ability of her bordering role, in The History Channel’s miniseries Hatfields and McCoys, Malone’s passion for acting returned.
In 2012 Malone starred in Dakota, a series on the YouTube channel Wigs, portraying the title character. She was attached to function Carson McCullers in the film Lonely Hunter, directed by Deborah Kampmeir, and had a supporting role in the independent drama In Our Nature (2012) opposite Zach Gilford and Gabrielle Union, playing one of several youth people on a couples’ getaway.
In 2013 Malone reunited similar to M. Blash and co-star Chloë Sevigny in the independent drama The Wait, portraying the sister of a woman who believes their dead mommy will be resurrected. The similar year she was cast as Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).
In 2014 Malone exhibited 39 photographs she had taken in Myanmar that summer. The exhibition, which ran from November 21 to 28, was called “The Holy Other.” It took place at MAMA, an art gallery owned by Malone’s friend Adarsha Benjamin in Downtown Los Angeles. Proceeds were donated to Girl Determined, a nonprofit organization that bolster girls’ education in Myanmar. Also in 2014 Malone had a supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s neo-noir film Inherent Vice (2014), portraying an ex-heroin addict who hires a detective (Joaquin Phoenix) to locate her husband. Malone moreover reprised the role of Johanna Mason in two Hunger Games sequels, Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) and Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015).
Malone was cast as Jenet Klyburn in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, also directed by Zack Snyder. Her scenes were left out of the theatrical pardon but included upon the “Ultimate Edition” home video release. In February 2015 Malone was cast nearby Elle Fanning in Nicolas Winding Refn’s horror film The Neon Demon, which focuses upon an aspiring model in Los Angeles. The film garnered criticism for a scene in which Malone engages in necrophilia. The Telegraph‘s Tim Robey deemed it the “most terrible film of the year” but conceded it was not “any aberration of Malone’s, who commits herself completely to making it an anguished, desperate, if inevitably revolting minute or correspondingly of screen time. It’s a Ask of context, and how this scene… slots into the film’s overall thesis.”
Malone co-starred in the ventilate of Riley Keough in So Yong Kim’s substitute film Lovesong (2016), playing a young girl who falls in love with her female best friend. Kate Erbland of IndieWire wrote that “Malone is at her most effervescent and appealing” but that “the overall effect is one of a disjointed adore story that can never quite find the tune, no matter how gifted its players.”
Malone is attributed as co-writer and featured vocalist on the Foster the People track “Static Space Lover” from the band’s third album, Sacred Hearts Club, released on July 21, 2017. She is time-honored to function the movies Stardust and The Tuna Goddess.
Last update 2021-08-06