Sarah Drew
Sarah Drew is an actor, born 1980.
She was a teenager when she started voicing Stacy Rowe on Daria, the fashion-club member whose sentences all tilt upward into a question, and the part ran the length of the MTV series from 1997 to 2001. Live action followed: Mary Helen Jones in Radio (2003), then Hannah Rogers on Everwood from 2004 to 2006.
Grey's Anatomy is the role that defines her. April Kepner is a difficult assignment, a devout, eager, rule-following doctor on a series that runs on transgression, and the trap is playing her as a joke. Drew does the opposite. She commits to the earnestness fully and lets the awkwardness belong to the character rather than to the performance, which is why a part that started as a foil lasted long enough to be written into the show's spine. She directs as well as acts.
The later career has followed the audience that responded to her: family and faith-market features such as Moms' Night Out and Indivisible, television movies including Front of the Class, and now Hallmark, where she leads Mistletoe Murders as Emily Lane. Those films are not made for critics and mostly do not survive them, but they are made for a real audience, and she is usually the reason they work.
The oddities are worth knowing about too: Bianca on Wonderfalls, Serena in The Baxter, and a run of TV movies where she plays the competent woman in a bad situation.
Movies (12)
TV (7)
Where to start with Sarah Drew
Everyone arrives through Grey's Anatomy, and that is the right door, but give it time. April begins as a foil and becomes one of the few characters that show allows to fail in ways it will not tidy up afterwards. That arc is the argument for Drew as a dramatic actor.
Before it, Everwood is the better-written series and the place you can hear her finding the register she still uses. Daria is the novelty pick, her voice under a character a whole generation quotes without knowing whose it is.
Wonderfalls is the cult item, cancelled fast and strange throughout. The Baxter drops her into a sharper comedy than her filmography suggests. And if you want the Hallmark version, Mistletoe Murders is the current one, cosy by design, with her carrying it.