--- title: Evan Rachel Wood description: Celebrate Evan Rachel Wood's birthday with her journey from child actress and Thirteen to Westworld, acclaimed films, television and music. canonical_url: https://marktheday.info/evan-rachel-wood language: en-GB date: 2026-09-06T15:46:08Z notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://marktheday.info/evan-rachel-wood. Schema.org structured data included at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. markdown-tokens: 2954 --- > **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://marktheday.info/evan-rachel-wood. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content. > **Structured data** as JSON-LD may be found at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers. > **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above. Evan Rachel Wood was born on September 7, 1987, in Raleigh, North Carolina, into a family in which acting was very much part of everyday life. Her father, Ira David Wood III, is an actor, playwright and theater director who founded Theatre in the Park in Raleigh, while her mother, Sara Lynn Moore, is an actress, director and acting coach. With that sort of family background, Wood's eventual arrival on stage and screen was perhaps less a bolt from the blue and more a matter of wondering how long it would take. She began acting professionally as a child, appearing in theatrical productions before moving into television. Her early screen credits included appearances in American Gothic and Profiler, followed by a substantial role in the television series Once and Again. Wood played Jessie Sammler, the daughter of Billy Campbell's character, and the role allowed the young actress to tackle unusually complicated emotional material. Film work followed quickly. Wood appeared alongside Kevin Bacon in Digging to China and later took roles in movies including Practical Magic and Little Secrets. By her early teens, she had already assembled the sort of résumé many adult actors would happily accept after years of auditions. Then came Thirteen. Released in 2003, the film starred Wood as Tracy Freeland, a previously well-behaved 13-year-old whose friendship with the rebellious Evie Zamora, played by Nikki Reed, sends her life rapidly into dangerous territory. Holly Hunter played Tracy's mother, Melanie, while Catherine Hardwicke directed. The film dealt with drug use, self-harm, sexuality, family conflict, peer pressure and the frightening speed with which an adolescent can transform while the adults around her are still trying to work out what happened on Tuesday. Wood's performance was intense, uncomfortable and remarkably mature. She received widespread critical acclaim and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. She was only 15 during filming, making the achievement particularly striking. Thirteen also established Wood as an actress willing to tackle difficult material rather than follow the safer route available to many successful young performers. Hollywood has never lacked roles for teenagers. Good roles for teenagers are another matter entirely. Wood continued selecting varied projects. In 2005, she appeared in Pretty Persuasion, playing a manipulative high-school student whose accusations create chaos around her. The dark comedy provided another character considerably removed from anything resembling wholesome family entertainment. She subsequently appeared in Running with Scissors, based on Augusten Burroughs' memoir, and then took a dramatically different turn in Julie Taymor's 2007 musical Across the Universe. The film built its story around songs by The Beatles, with Wood playing Lucy Carrigan opposite Jim Sturgess as Jude. For an actress associated with emotionally demanding dramas, suddenly singing Beatles songs while characters floated through elaborate psychedelic imagery might have seemed a considerable departure. Wood, however, had musical ability as well as acting experience and performed her own vocals. Among her musical performances in the film were interpretations of Beatles classics including "If I Fell" and "Blackbird." In 2008, Wood appeared in Darren Aronofsky's acclaimed drama The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as aging professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Wood played Randy's estranged daughter, Stephanie. Their strained relationship supplied some of the film's most painful moments, particularly as Randy attempts to repair years of neglect while simultaneously being drawn back toward the wrestling career destroying his body. Once again, Wood had managed to locate a family in which absolutely nobody was likely to enjoy a quiet Sunday lunch. Her television career continued expanding. Wood joined HBO's True Blood as Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana. The recurring role allowed her to embrace something considerably more flamboyant than many of her earlier characters. Sophie-Anne was glamorous, powerful, ancient and thoroughly dangerous—qualities rarely found together on an ordinary résumé. Wood also appeared in the 2011 miniseries Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslet. Her performance as the adult Veda Pierce earned Wood nominations for both the Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe. Veda is ambitious, talented and spectacularly difficult, providing Wood with yet another opportunity to play somebody unlikely to receive a "World's Easiest Daughter" coffee mug. Other film appearances included George Clooney's political drama The Ides of March, in which she played campaign intern Molly Stearns, and Charlie Countryman, alongside Shia LaBeouf and Mads Mikkelsen. She also appeared in Into the Forest with Elliot Page, playing sisters attempting to survive after a massive power failure disrupts modern society. Then, in 2016, Wood took the role that introduced her to an entirely new generation of viewers. HBO's Westworld, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and inspired by Michael Crichton's 1973 film, presented a futuristic theme park populated by extraordinarily lifelike android "hosts." Wealthy human guests could visit the park and indulge their fantasies with few apparent consequences. Wood played Dolores Abernathy, initially presented as a cheerful rancher's daughter living an idyllic frontier existence. There was, unfortunately, a slight problem. Almost everything she understood about her life was a carefully constructed lie. Dolores was an artificial being repeatedly subjected to scripted storylines, memory wipes and violence for the entertainment of human visitors. As fragments of earlier experiences began resurfacing, she gradually became aware of what she was and of the world controlling her. Wood's performance required her to move between innocence, terror, calculation, fury and increasingly complex questions about consciousness and free will. Dolores could appear utterly human one moment and subtly artificial the next, often without any obvious change beyond Wood's expression or voice. The performance became one of the defining elements of Westworld. Wood received multiple Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series as well as Golden Globe recognition. As the series progressed, Dolores evolved dramatically. The innocent rancher's daughter became a revolutionary figure determined to escape the artificial world constructed around her. The narrative became increasingly complicated, involving artificial intelligence, multiple timelines, duplicate consciousnesses and questions about who was actually inhabiting which body. At some point, keeping track of Westworld required either careful concentration or a large piece of paper and several yards of string. Wood remained central to the series through its four-season run, which concluded in 2022. Her voice work also brought her into the Disney universe. In Frozen II in 2019, Wood voiced Queen Iduna, the mother of Elsa and Anna. She performed "All Is Found," the lullaby that introduces important elements of the film's story. The role meant that an actress known for Thirteen, The Wrestler and Westworld could now also be heard singing to children around the world. That is range. Music has remained an important part of Wood's creative life outside acting. She has performed extensively as a singer and formed the musical duo Rebel and a Basketcase with Zach Villa. She later performed with guitarist and musician Zane Carney as Evan + Zane, presenting live shows built around interpretations of well-known songs. Wood has also been active in advocacy. She testified before the United States Congress in 2018 while supporting legislation concerning survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. She subsequently became involved with efforts to extend legal protections for survivors and publicly discussed her own experiences with abuse. In 2022, HBO released the documentary Phoenix Rising, directed by Amy Berg, examining Wood's experiences and activism. The documentary included allegations made by Wood against musician Marilyn Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner. Warner denied allegations of abuse. Their dispute subsequently resulted in litigation, portions of which were later resolved or dismissed. Because the matter involved serious allegations and legal proceedings, it became a significant and highly public part of Wood's life beyond her acting career. Wood's personal life has frequently attracted media attention as well. She married actor Jamie Bell in 2012 after the pair had previously dated, separated and later reunited. They welcomed a son in 2013 before separating the following year. Despite beginning her career extraordinarily young, Wood has avoided becoming permanently identified with any single period of it. Child actress became teenage dramatic performer; Thirteen led to independent films and musicals; film work gave way to prestigious television; and Dolores Abernathy turned her into one of the recognizable faces of modern science fiction. That evolution is particularly impressive because the roles have rarely depended upon the same qualities. Tracy in Thirteen is raw and painfully human. Sophie-Anne in True Blood is theatrical and supernatural. Dolores in Westworld begins as something pretending to be human and gradually becomes something far more difficult to define. Queen Iduna in Frozen II, meanwhile, simply needed Wood to stop worrying about murderous robots for a moment and sing a nice lullaby. Evan Rachel Wood has spent most of her life in front of an audience, yet her career continues to resist easy categorization. Drama, science fiction, fantasy, musicals, independent cinema, television and music have all provided different outlets for her abilities. And after surviving Thirteen, True Blood and four seasons of Westworld, perhaps playing the mother of two Disney princesses really did count as a relaxing change of pace. ```json { "@context": "http:\/\/schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Article", "author": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#paul_stallibrass_144f731fa4" }, "dateModified": "2026-09-06T15:46:08Z", "datePublished": "2026-09-06T14:50:46Z", "description": "Celebrate Evan Rachel Wood's birthday with her journey from child actress and Thirteen to Westworld, acclaimed films, television and music.", "headline": "Evan Rachel Wood", "image": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo" }, "inLanguage": "en-GB", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/evan-rachel-wood" }, "publisher": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultPublisher" }, "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/evan-rachel-wood" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Paul Stallibrass", "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#paul_stallibrass_144f731fa4" }, { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo", "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "", "width": 0, "height": 0 }, { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultPublisher", "@type": "Organization", "url": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/", "logo": { "@id": "https:\/\/marktheday.info\/#defaultLogo" }, "name": "" } ] } ```