Odessa Young

Odessa Young (born 1997 or 1998) is an Australian actress. She gained prominence through her roles in the Nine Network drama Tricky Business (2012) and the 2015 films Looking for Grace and The Daughter, the latter of which earned her an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her films since include Assassination Nation, A Million Little Pieces (both 2018), Shirley (2020), Mothering Sunday (2021) and Manodrome (2023). On television, she starred in the miniseries The Stand (2020). Young made her off-Broadway debut in Days of Rage.

Odessa Young
Young at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival
Born	1997 or 1998 Australia
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2007–present

Early life and education

Odessa Young was born in 1997 or 1998.^[1] She grew up in Australia, where her father Adam is a musician and her mother, Rachel, a writer.^[2]

She started taking after-school acting classes at 11 years old.^[3] She attended a performing arts high school in Sydney, taking part in theatre productions.^[4] Within two days of turning 18, she relocated from Sydney to Los Angeles, California. Two years later, Young moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.^[5]

Career

Odessa Young started acting professionally at the age of 11,^[6] when she was cast through her drama teacher in the Australian children's show My Place.^[6] She acted in television series such as Wonderland and Tricky Business before making the transition into feature film work.^[7]

In 2015, she co-starred in the film The Daughter with Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill.^[8][9] She was cast in the title role after modifying her take on the character to seem less mature than in her first audition.^[10] Also in 2015, she acted alongside Radha Mitchell in Looking for Grace, where she played the titular role.^[11][12] Later that year, she was dubbed "Australia's brightest rising star" by Elle Magazine.^[13] For her role in The Daughter, Young attracted considerable critical acclaim^[14] and won Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 2016 AACTA Awards.^[15] Her performance in The Daughter also earned her an award for Best Actress from the Australian Film Critics Association.^[16]

In 2016, she was in final negotiations to play the female lead in When the Street Lights Go On on Hulu.^[17]

In 2017, Young starred as Genevieve in the web series High Life; for her performance, she won an International Academy of Web Television Award for Best Lead Actress – Drama.^[18] In 2018, she won Best Actress at the 5th annual Vancouver Web Series Festival for her role in the same series.^[19]

In 2018, she starred in the films Assassination Nation and A Million Little Pieces.^[2] That year, she also made her off-Broadway debut in Days of Rage at the Tony Kiser Theater, where she plays the radical Quinn in 1969.^[4] In winter 2019 she starred in The Mother at Atlantic Theater Company off-broadway as Emily. ^[20]

She was cast in The Stand miniseries in 2019.^[21] With the Stand, there were four shooting days before lockdown in Vancouver, with shooting picking up again later.^[5] Released in 2020, the series features Young as Frannie, with a "new coda co-written by King himself" that gives her a different portrayal than the book in the final episode.^[22][23]

In 2020, Young was cast as a hostess in the HBO Max television series Tokyo Vice, to be directed by Michael Mann and written by J. T. Rogers. She was subsequently replaced by Rachel Keller,^[24][25] when she pulled out of the production over scheduling conflicts related to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[26][27] In the 2020 film Shirley, Young plays Rose,^[28] a newly married young woman living in the same house as Shirley Jackson.^[29] In 2020, Odessa Young participated in Acting for a Cause, a live classic play and screenplay reading series created, directed and produced by Brando Crawford. Young played Lady Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. The reading raised funds for non-profit charities including Mount Sinai Medical Center.^[30][31]

Vogue named her one of six actors to watch in 2021.^[32] That year, she was also cast in the British film Mothering Sunday.^[32]

In June 2024, Young was cast to play a love interest of Bruce Springsteen, who will be played by Jeremy Allen White, in the upcoming film Deliver Me from Nowhere which will be based on the book of the same name and will be about the recording of Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska.^[33]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2015	The Daughter	Hedvig Finch
	Looking for Grace	Grace
2017	Sweet Virginia	Maggie Russell
2018	Assassination Nation	Lily Colson
	A Million Little Pieces	Lilly
	The Professor	Olivia Brown
	Celeste	Rita
2019	The Giant	Charlotte
2020	Shirley	Rose Nemser/Paula
2021	Mothering Sunday	Jane Fairchild
2023	Manodrome	Sal
2024	My First Film	Vita
	The Damned	Eva	[34]
	The Order	Zillah
2025	Deliver Me from Nowhere	Faye	Post-production

Key

†	Denotes film or TV productions that have not yet been released

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2009	My Place	Alexandra Owen	1 episode
2012	Tricky Business	Emma Christie	Main cast
2014	The Moodys	Fran	1 episode
2015	Wonderland	Lucy Wallace	3 episodes
2017	High Life	Genevieve	Web series
2020	The Stand	Frannie Goldsmith	Miniseries
2022	The Staircase	Martha Ratliff	Miniseries
2025	The Narrow Road to the Deep North	Amy Mulvaney	Miniseries
TBA	Black Rabbit	Gen	Upcoming miniseries

Awards and nominations

Year	Association	Category	Nominated work	Result	Ref.
2016	AACTA Awards	Best Actress in a Leading Role	The Daughter	Won	[35]
2017	International Academy of Web Television	Best Lead Actress – Drama	High Life	Won	[36]
2018	Vancouver Web Series Festival	Best Actress	High Life	Won	[37]