Laine MacNeil
Laine MacNeil is an actor, born 1997.
MacNeil was a Vancouver child actor when the Diary of a Wimpy Kid films arrived, and she played Patty Farrell in all three of them, from 2010 to 2012. Accounts of how old she was on the first one disagree, so the safe answer is that she was a kid. Patty is a genuinely hard part, because the joke only works if she stays smug without ever asking the audience to forgive her, and she never softens it. The role brought five Young Artist Award nominations and a win for best young supporting actress in a feature.
Around the trilogy she worked steadily inside the Vancouver production system rather than out of it: a small part in the TV movie Mr. Troop Mom before it, then Angie Gower in The Killing, Young Glenna in Horns, Emily Wilson in Almost Human, teenagers in R.L. Stine's Monsterville and The Hollow.
The later credits get smaller: a counter girl in The Edge of Seventeen, someone's daughter in Deadly Class, a supporting role in the teen film Spontaneous. That is a familiar shape for a child performer who grew up in a busy shooting city, where the franchise is the peak and the rest is craft.
Movies (9)
TV (3)
Where to start with Laine MacNeil
The franchise is the obvious entry. Diary of a Wimpy Kid has her sharpest work in it, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules gives her more room, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days closes the run.
Outside it, The Killing is the best-made thing she appears in even though the part is small, and Horns hands her a short flashback role in a much stranger film. Watch Spontaneous if you want her as a teenager rather than as a child performer; it is the most interesting of the later credits. The Edge of Seventeen has her in a bit part in a very good comedy, and Mr. Troop Mom is where the whole thing started.