Molly Gordon

There is a credit here from 2001, as a child, in I Am Sam, and then a fourteen-year gap before the next one. Molly Gordon did not grow up as a working child actor so much as start once, very early, and then come back properly.

The run that established her was comic supporting work in studio films: Life of the Party in 2018, then Booksmart and Good Boys in 2019. She is unusually good at one particular character, the person performing a slightly heightened version of themselves at marginally the wrong volume, and she plays it with affection rather than contempt, which is the whole difference between a joke and a human being. Shiva Baby and Am I OK? applied the same instinct in an independent register.

Theater Camp in 2023 is the point where she stopped waiting to be cast. She co-directed, co-wrote and starred in it, and the film is genuinely fond of the world it is mocking, which is rarer than it should be. The same year, The Bear gave her Claire Dunlap, recurring from 2023 through 2026, and by far the largest audience of anything she has done.

She co-wrote and starred in Oh, Hi! in 2025, which settles the question of whether the writing was a one-off. The acting career is good. The writing and directing career looks like the one to watch.