Laura Prepon
Laura Prepon is an actor, born 1980.
A basement in Wisconsin, a sitcom that ran from 1998 to 2006, and the role that still leads every introduction: Laura Prepon, born in Watchung, New Jersey in 1980, played Donna Pinciotti on That '70s Show as the smartest and least impressed person in the room, which is a thankless job in an ensemble built on idiots.
Her film debut came in 2001 with the independent drama Southlander, which is not among the credits here, and most of the film work that followed stayed small: Reanna in Slackers, Holly in Lay the Favorite, Jennifer in The Kitchen.
The part that changed the trajectory was Alex Vause in Orange Is the New Black, a series that ran from 2013 to 2019. Vause let her play something no sitcom had asked for: charm used as a tool, affection and manipulation running along the same wire, delivered mostly in close-up and mostly at low volume. It is a better performance than the show's later reputation suggests.
The hardest thing on her record is Karla, a 2006 film in which she plays Karla Homolka, a real and convicted offender, and it is a punishing watch by design. Her best film part is Charlotte Dylan in The Hero in 2017, written to unbalance an older man and played without a trace of cruelty. She came back to Donna, now Donna Pinciotti-Forman, in That '90s Show in 2023, and she directs television as well as acting in it.
Movies (6)
TV (6)
Where to start with Laura Prepon
Nobody needs telling to watch That '70s Show, so here is the case for everything else. Go to Orange Is the New Black first, because Alex Vause is the part that proved she could hold a scene with no laugh track under it, and the early stretch of that series is where her work is sharpest.
Then The Hero, a small quiet film that hands her the best-written character on this page and the space to underplay it. The Girl on the Train is the mainstream thriller and she is a supporting presence in it, so come for the adaptation rather than for her.
That '90s Show is comfort viewing and works best when the original is fresh. Karla is here for completeness and is a genuinely grim sit; approach it as true crime, not as a star vehicle.