Ciara Bravo
Ciara Bravo is an actor, born 1997.
Nickelodeon had her first. Ciara Bravo, born in Alexandria, Kentucky, in 1997, played Katie Knight across Big Time Rush and its feature spinoff Big Time Movie, turned up on Supah Ninjas and The Haunted Hathaways, headlined the network television films Jinxed and Swindle, and did the voice work that comes with that world: Giselita in Open Season 3, Peaches in Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas and Sarah on Special Agent Oso. It is a complete childhood career, and most people who have one do not get a second.
She got a second, and she chose it deliberately. Red Band Society in 2014 was the pivot, a hospital drama with a teenage cast and adult stakes. Then came To the Bone, A Teacher, and Emily in Cherry, parts that ask for damage rather than charm. The best of them is Del in Wayne: profane, furious, very funny and completely unsentimental, the rare teenage character who is written as a full person and played as one.
The recent run keeps the same appetite. She was Crystal in Small Engine Repair, Carly in Swiped, and has Last Days and Due West behind her, with Voicemails for Isabelle putting her at the top of the call sheet as Isabelle Shaw. Former child actors who are still working a decade later are uncommon. Ones who end up in harder and better material than they started in are rarer still.
Movies (14)
TV (10)
Where to start with Ciara Bravo
Wayne first, and do not be put off by the premise. Del is the reason the show works, and Bravo plays her with a bluntness that most teen roles are never trusted with.
After that, Cherry for scale and To the Bone for restraint. Both put her in ensembles where the temptation is to overplay, and she does not. A Teacher is the hardest watch of the three and the most carefully made.
If you want the child-actor half, Big Time Rush is the definitive artifact, cheerful and loud and entirely of its moment, and Swindle is a perfectly decent Saturday afternoon caper.
Then jump to the newest work. Small Engine Repair is a nasty, well-written chamber piece, and Voicemails for Isabelle is her first genuine lead. Watching those back to back with the Nickelodeon material makes the size of the transition obvious.