Kathryn Newton

Newton started as a working child actor on network television and spent her teens playing other people's daughters. She was Louise on Gary Unmarried at eleven, Alex in Paranormal Activity 4 at fifteen, Claire Novak on Supernatural, Joanie on Halt and Catch Fire, and Abigail on Big Little Lies, which amounts to a great many scenes of being difficult in an expensive kitchen. In Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri she gets a single flashback as the daughter whose murder the film is about, and she makes it count.

The pivot came through horror comedy, where her particular quality finally became useful. She looks like the wholesome one, which means a film can get an enormous amount out of putting something else behind her eyes. Freaky is the clearest case: the premise is a body swap, so Newton has to play a middle-aged slasher wearing a high schooler, and she does it with a slow heavy walk and no winking at the camera at all. Lisa Frankenstein leans on the same contrast, and Abigail lets her play someone with no wholesomeness left to trade on.

She has the Marvel job now, carrying Cassie Lang from Quantumania into Avengers: Doomsday, and so far it has given her considerably less to do than a ninety-minute horror film did.