Alison Brie

Alison Brie
Brie at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Alison Brie
Born	Alison Brie Schermerhorn 12/29/1982
Birthplace	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actress, producer, writer
Known for	Mad Men, Community, GLOW, BoJack Horseman
Education	California Institute of the Arts (BFA)
Spouse(s)	Dave Franco

Alison Brie Schermerhorn (born December 29, 1982) is an American actress, producer, and writer. Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, she trained in theater before transitioning to television in the mid-2000s, where she became known for her work across prestige drama, comedy, and animation. Brie rose to prominence playing Trudy Campbell in the AMC drama Mad Men (2007–2015) and Annie Edison in the NBC and Yahoo! comedy Community (2009–2015), two roles she performed concurrently for several years. She subsequently voiced Diane Nguyen in the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman (2014–2020) and starred as wrestler Ruth Wilder in the Netflix comedy drama GLOW (2017–2019), earning nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards for the latter performance. Beyond television, Brie has appeared in film roles including Get Hard (2015), the Lego Movie film series (2014–2019), Promising Young Woman (2020), and Happiest Season (2020). She has also co-written, produced, and starred in three films directed by her husband Dave Franco — Horse Girl (2020), Spin Me Round (2022), and Somebody I Used to Know (2023) — and in 2025 played the villain Evil-Lyn in the live-action adaptation of Masters of the Universe.

Early Life

Alison Brie Schermerhorn was born on December 29, 1982, in Los Angeles, California. She was raised in the Los Angeles area and developed an interest in performance during her childhood, taking part in youth theater productions in the region. In interviews she has described an early commitment to acting that led her to pursue formal training in the discipline after high school.

Brie's family ties to the film industry expanded considerably through her later marriage: actor James Franco and artist Tom Franco became her brothers-in-law through her marriage to their brother, actor and filmmaker Dave Franco.

Education

Brie attended the California Institute of the Arts, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting. Her conservatory training at the school emphasized stage performance, and she has cited the program as foundational to her subsequent transition into screen work. While a student and shortly after graduating, she performed in regional theater productions in California before pursuing television and film auditions in Los Angeles.

Career

Early work and television breakthrough

Brie began her professional acting career in 2004, taking small roles in independent films and television guest appearances. Her early work included parts in low-budget features and series before she was cast in two roles in 2007 that would define the first decade of her career.

In 2007, Brie was cast as Trudy Campbell, the wife of advertising executive Pete Campbell, in the AMC period drama Mad Men. The series, set in the 1960s advertising industry of New York City, became a critical and cultural touchstone of its era. Brie appeared in a recurring capacity across the show's run, eventually being credited as a series regular, and she remained part of the ensemble through the show's conclusion in 2015.

In 2009, Brie was cast as Annie Edison, an academically driven former high school student attending a community college, in the NBC sitcom Community, created by Dan Harmon. The role marked her breakthrough as a lead comedic performer and ran for six seasons across NBC and, in its final season, Yahoo! Screen, concluding in 2015. The overlapping schedules of Mad Men and Community meant Brie spent much of the late 2000s and early 2010s working concurrently on the two series.

Film roles and continued television work

While working on her two ongoing series, Brie expanded into feature film. She appeared in the 2011 horror film Scream 4, directed by Wes Craven, and the 2012 romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement opposite Jason Segel and Emily Blunt. In 2014, she voiced the character Unikitty in the animated feature The Lego Movie, a role she reprised in subsequent installments of the franchise through 2019.

In 2015, Brie appeared in the comedy Get Hard alongside Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, and starred opposite Jason Sudeikis in the romantic comedy Sleeping with Other People. She also appeared in How to Be Single (2016), the Steven Spielberg–directed historical drama The Post (2017), and the comedy The Little Hours (2017).

In 2014, Brie was cast as Diane Nguyen in the Netflix animated comedy BoJack Horseman, created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. The series, which premiered that year, paired her with Will Arnett, Aaron Paul, Amy Sedaris, and Paul F. Tompkins, and ran for six seasons until 2020. Diane Nguyen, a writer and the on-again, off-again partner of one of the show's central characters, became one of Brie's most identified roles in the years following the conclusions of Mad Men and Community.

GLOW and producing career

In 2017, Brie began starring as Ruth "Zoya the Destroya" Wilder in the Netflix comedy drama GLOW, a fictionalized account of the 1980s women's professional wrestling television program Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. The series cast Brie opposite Betty Gilpin, with whom her character maintained a complex friendship and rivalry across the show's three seasons. GLOW aired from 2017 to 2019; a fourth and final season had been ordered before being cancelled by Netflix in 2020 amid production complications during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2025 interview on Collider Ladies Night, Brie spoke emotionally about the show and her working relationship with Gilpin, describing the cancellation as a lasting source of disappointment. Her work on GLOW earned her nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Brie expanded into screenwriting and producing during the same period. In 2020, she co-wrote and starred in Horse Girl, a Netflix-released psychological drama directed by Jeff Baena that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. That same year she appeared in Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman and the holiday romantic comedy Happiest Season.

In 2022, Brie co-wrote and starred in Spin Me Round, again directed by Baena, in which she played an American restaurant manager who travels to Italy for a corporate retreat. In 2023, she wrote, produced, and starred in Somebody I Used to Know, directed by her husband, Dave Franco; the film, which co-starred Jay Ellis and Kiersey Clemons, was released by Amazon Studios.

Later film roles

Brie continued to work prolifically in feature film in the mid-2020s. In 2025, she starred in the horror-comedy Together opposite Dave Franco. Later in 2025, she appeared as the villain Evil-Lyn opposite Jared Leto's Skeletor and Nicholas Galitzine's He-Man in the live-action film adaptation of Masters of the Universe. In interviews accompanying the release, Brie discussed undertaking an intensive fitness regimen to prepare for the physically demanding role, describing it as taking her training to a new level compared with her prior work on GLOW. She also spoke about wearing a bald cap beneath her costume and the experience of playing a villain for the first time in a major studio production. The film opened theatrically in 2025, with Brie undertaking extensive promotional appearances ahead of release.

Other appearances

Outside of her regular roles, Brie has appeared in guest spots on numerous television series. She voiced characters on the Fox animated series American Dad!, and competed against Will Arnett on the Spike series Lip Sync Battle.

Personal Life

Brie has been married to actor and filmmaker Dave Franco since 2017. The two have collaborated professionally on multiple projects, including Somebody I Used to Know, which Franco directed and which Brie co-wrote and starred in, and the 2025 film Together, in which they co-starred. Through her marriage, James Franco and Tom Franco became her brothers-in-law.

Brie has spoken publicly about the close working relationships she developed on long-running productions, particularly GLOW, describing her bond with co-star Betty Gilpin as one of the most significant of her career. She also collaborated repeatedly with director Jeff Baena, who directed The Little Hours, Horse Girl, and Spin Me Round.

Recognition

Brie's performance as Ruth Wilder in GLOW earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2018, as well as a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her work in Mad Men was part of an ensemble that received repeated Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series during the show's run.

Brie has appeared on multiple ranked lists in popular media. She was named to Maxim's "Hot 100" list in 2010 and 2011, and was profiled in Esquire's "Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman" feature. She was also featured on the cover of FHM and included on AskMen's annual list of top women in 2014.

In the fashion press, Brie's appearances on red carpets and talk shows have continued to draw coverage, including a 2025 Late Night with Seth Meyers appearance in a Mugler look promoting Masters of the Universe.

Legacy

Brie's career has spanned the transition from network and cable television to streaming-led production. Her concurrent roles on Mad Men and Community between 2009 and 2015 placed her in two of the most discussed series of their respective genres during that period, and her subsequent move into Netflix originals — BoJack Horseman and GLOW — coincided with the streaming service's emergence as a dominant producer of scripted comedy and drama.

The recurring collaboration between Brie and director Jeff Baena across The Little Hours, Horse Girl, and Spin Me Round produced a body of independent feature work in which she served not only as performer but, on the latter two films, as co-writer and producer. Her continued partnership with Dave Franco on Somebody I Used to Know and Together has established her as a recurring creative collaborator within a closely connected group of filmmakers and performers.

GLOW in particular has been cited as a significant entry in television depictions of women's professional wrestling and the lives of women working in 1980s American entertainment. The series' cancellation amid the pandemic, and Brie's continued public reflection on it years after the fact, have kept the show a recurring topic in discussions of streaming-era programming decisions.

External links

• Get Hard movie clips on snip.ninja