Alex McKenna
Alex McKenna is an actor, born 1984.
McKenna was a working child actor in the mid-1990s, which is a hard job to come out of with a career intact. She played Petunia Stupid in The Stupids in 1996, then Mickey Apple in the sitcom You Wish, then appeared in the horror anthology Campfire Tales. Born in Hollywood in 1984, she was inside the industry before she had much say in the matter.
Then the career went quiet, and it came back differently. She resumed in 2010 with a guest run on 90210, and in 2012 picked up recurring parts across several series at once, including Guys with Kids, Common Law, Dallas and Two and a Half Men. Earlier she had played Abby Macy on Crossing Jordan; the horror feature Dark House followed in 2014. Solid, unglamorous television work, and none of it the thing she is best known for.
That thing is not on television at all. She played Sadie Adler in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the standout performances in a medium that has only recently started rewarding acting rather than voice work. Her animation role as Senna in The Legend of Korra runs on the same instinct: she is consistently more interesting when the camera is not on her.
Movies (3)
TV (4)
Where to start with Alex McKenna
The honest answer is that her best performance is in a video game, Red Dead Redemption 2, and nothing on the screen credits here matches it. If you want to understand why she is worth following, that is the place.
Within what is listed, The Legend of Korra is the pick. Senna is a small part in a very good series and it is the same voice doing the same thing: warmth without sweetness. Crossing Jordan is the substantial dramatic television, and Guys with Kids is the comedy, though it was a short-lived sitcom and it shows.
For the child-actor era, The Stupids is a genuinely odd film that has aged into a curiosity, and Campfire Tales is anthology horror with a strong segment or two. Dark House is skippable unless you are completing the set.