Mia Wasikowska

Mia Wasikowska was born in Canberra in 1989, made her screen debut on the Australian drama All Saints in 2004 and her feature debut in Suburban Mayhem two years later. The HBO series In Treatment brought the first serious critical attention in 2008, and an Independent Spirit nomination for That Evening Sun followed in 2009. Then 2010 arrived with two films that pointed in opposite directions: the title role in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which made her globally famous, and Joni in The Kids Are All Right, which showed what she would rather be doing.

She has largely followed the second path. Her gift is watchfulness: she plays characters who are being appraised and are appraising back, and she can hold a scene without saying anything, which is why auteur directors keep casting her. India in Stoker is the purest version, a performance built almost entirely from gesture and attention. Jane Eyre is the best classical showcase, played with considerably more spine than most adaptations allow, and Ava in Only Lovers Left Alive is the funniest thing she has done, a walking wrecking ball dropped into a film about exquisite good taste.

The rest of the filmography reads like a list of distinctive directors: Crimson Peak, Maps to the Stars, The Double, Madame Bovary, Lawless, The Devil All the Time, Damsel, Judy and Punch, Bergman Island, Club Zero. She has also directed, taking a director credit on the 2013 film The Turning and on Madly.