Odessa Young

Odessa Young (born January 11, 1998) is an Australian actress. She gained prominence through her roles in the Nine Network drama Tricky Business and the 2015 films Looking for Grace and The Daughter, the latter earning 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.

Early life and education Young was born on 6 March 1998. She grew up in Australia, where her father Adam is a musician and her mother, Rachel, a writer. She attended a performing arts high school in Sydney, taking part in theatre productions.

Career

Young started acting professionally at the age of 11, when she was cast through her drama teacher in the Australian children's show My Place.

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

In 2016 she was in final negotiations to play the female lead in When the Street Lights Go On on Hulu, but the show was never picked up beyond pilot.

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. In 2018, she won Best Actress at the 5th annual Vancouver Web Series Festival for her role in the same series.

In 2018, she starred in the films Assassination Nation and A Million Little Pieces. 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. In winter 2019, she starred in The Mother at Atlantic Theater Company off-broadway as Emily.

She was cast in miniseries The Stand in 2019. With The Stand, there were four shooting days before lockdown in Vancouver, with shooting picking up again later.

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, when she pulled out of the production over scheduling conflicts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2020 film Shirley, Young plays Rose, a newly married young woman living in the same house as Shirley Jackson. Also in the same year, 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.

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

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

Filmography

Film Year Title Role NotesRef.2015 The Daughter Hedvig Finch Looking for Grace Grace 2017 Sweet Virginia Maggie Russell2018 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 The Order Zillah Craig 2025 Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Faye Romano TBA Jo Cooper Post-production

Television

Year Title Role NotesRef. 2009 My Place Alexandra Owen 1 episode 2012 Tricky Business Emma Christie Main cast 2013–2015 Wonderland Lucy Wallace 3 episodes 2014 The Moodys Fran 1 episode 2017 High Life Genevieve Web series 2020–2021 The Stand Frannie GoldsmithMiniseries 2022 The Staircase Martha Ratliff2025 The Narrow Road to the Deep North Amy Mulvaney Black Rabbit Gen TBAUpcoming series

Awards and nominations