Brit Marling
Brit Marling is an actor, born 1982.
Rather than wait for the parts, she wrote them. Brit Marling co-wrote and starred in Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, both premiering at Sundance in 2011, then did it again with The East in 2013. That is an unusual way into a film career and it set the terms for the rest of hers: she has been an author of her own work from the beginning, even while taking roles in other people's films.
The recurring figure in her writing is a person who can make other people believe. Maggie in Sound of My Voice claims to have come from the future. Sarah in The East is an operative embedded inside an activist collective. The OA is built on a story only its narrator can vouch for. What Marling is good at is holding a scene with total conviction and no visible strain, which is why that kind of role suits her: she never plays the character as a fraud or as a saint, and leaves the film to make up its own mind.
As a writer she keeps taking one specific risk, the sincere metaphysical story told with a straight face. The OA, which she co-created, wrote and starred in between 2016 and 2019, is the fullest version and the most divisive, an earnest science fiction mystery involving interpretive movement, either the bravest thing on television that decade or unbearable depending entirely on the viewer. A Murder at the End of the World followed in 2023, colder and closer to a conventional thriller. In other people's projects, Arbitrage, The Company You Keep, I Origins, she is used more narrowly, as the composed and watchful professional. The self-authored work is where the interesting version of her lives.
Movies (9)
TV (6)
Where to start with Brit Marling
Another Earth first. It is the cheapest-looking film on this list and the one that best explains her, a science fiction premise used as a moral problem, with a lead performance that refuses to ask you for sympathy.
Then Sound of My Voice, the sharper of the two 2011 films and the better showcase, because the entire thing rests on whether you believe her. It is also the fastest route to understanding why she keeps writing herself into rooms full of people who need persuading.
The OA is the real commitment. Give it two episodes and you will know whether you are in; if you are, nothing else on television resembles it. A Murder at the End of the World is the more accessible follow-up. Elsewhere, The East is a solid thriller she also wrote, Arbitrage has her holding her own opposite Richard Gere, and I Origins most divides people who like this kind of science fiction.