Kerris Dorsey
Kerris Dorsey is an actor, born 1998.
A pattern runs through Kerris Dorsey's best-known parts: she keeps playing somebody's daughter, usually the daughter of a driven and difficult man. Born in Los Angeles in 1998, she was a small child when she played Kathy Cash in Walk the Line, and turned up the same year in Just Like Heaven. Then came Paige Whedon on Brothers and Sisters, and Casey Beane, Billy Beane's daughter, in Moneyball.
The Moneyball part is the one worth arguing about. The film is built out of statistics and men shouting in offices, and Dorsey's scenes are the only place it lets itself be soft. She plays Casey without a trace of the precocious-kid delivery those roles usually attract, which is exactly why the film can hang its quietest moments on her without the whole thing tipping into sentiment.
Ray Donovan gave her the long version of the same idea. Bridget Donovan grows up across the series inside a family that keeps getting more dangerous, and Dorsey carried the character all the way through to Ray Donovan: The Movie in 2022. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day let her play broad comedy instead, and a run of family titles including Girl vs. Monster and An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars fills in the years between.
Movies (9)
TV (4)
Where to start with Kerris Dorsey
Moneyball first, and not only because it is the best film on the list. Her handful of scenes are load-bearing: the movie needs one relationship that is not transactional, and she is it.
Ray Donovan is the real body of work. Watching Bridget from the early seasons onward is watching an actor grow up inside a part, and the role gets steadily harder to play as the family's damage accumulates around her. Ray Donovan: The Movie closes it out.
For the early material, Walk the Line is a curio, since she is tiny in it and easy to miss. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is the pick if you want her doing comedy, and Brothers and Sisters is where the television career actually started.