Clare Preuss

Clare Preuss
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Actress, theatre artist, filmmaker
Known for	Caroline Krafft in Mean Girls

Clare Preuss is a Canadian actress, theatre artist, and filmmaker based in Calgary, Alberta. She is best known to international audiences for her role as Caroline Krafft, the Mathlete opponent of Lindsay Lohan's Cady Heron in the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls, a part she landed in Toronto early in her screen career. In the years since that brief but memorable screen appearance, Preuss has built the majority of her career in Canadian theatre, working extensively with companies in Toronto and Calgary as a performer, deviser, and director. In 2025, she made her transition to feature filmmaking with Do Us Part, a project that evolved out of a script development residency with Downstage Theatre in Calgary into her first full-length film.

Early life

Preuss is Canadian, and at the time of casting in Mean Girls in the early 2000s she was based in Toronto, where the film was shot. According to TMZ, Preuss was 26 years old when she was cast in the role of Caroline Krafft, which would place her birth year in approximately 1978. A 2025 follow-up feature reported her age as 44, consistent with that range. She has since relocated to Calgary, Alberta, where she has anchored much of her later theatre and film work.

Career

Mean Girls and early screen work

Preuss's most widely recognized screen credit is her appearance as Caroline Krafft in Mean Girls (2004), the Tina Fey-scripted high school comedy directed by Mark Waters. In the film's climactic Mathletes competition, Krafft is the rival captain from Marymount Prep who faces Lindsay Lohan's Cady Heron in a tie-breaking sudden death round. The scene includes a now-frequently-quoted internal monologue in which Cady reassures herself by disparaging Krafft's appearance before recognizing the futility of the put-down. Preuss was cast in the role in Toronto, where principal photography took place, and was 26 years old at the time of filming.

Although the part was a small one, the character became one of the film's enduring cultural references, and Preuss has been the subject of repeated retrospective profiles in entertainment media, including a 2016 Refinery29 feature on the actress's appearance, and TMZ "'Memba Her?!" features in 2023 and 2025. In a January 2024 interview with Global News, timed to the release of the new Mean Girls musical film, Preuss reflected on the role and noted that audiences continue to recognize her for it two decades after the original film's release.

Theatre work

The bulk of Preuss's career has taken place in Canadian theatre rather than on screen. After her early Toronto-based work, she became closely associated with the Calgary theatre community, particularly with Downstage Theatre, a company that produces socially engaged new Canadian work. Her involvement with Downstage included script development that ultimately produced the feature film Do Us Part.

Preuss has also worked in Toronto's independent theatre sector. In 2023, she was associated with productions in the Tarragon Theatre orbit, during a season that included the staging of A Poem for Rabia, a piece reviewed by the theatre publication Front Mezz Junkies. In Calgary, she has been part of the broader independent theatre ecosystem that includes Downstage, Handsome Alice Theatre, and Verb Theatre, all of which collaborated on the 2024 Calgary production of Beautiful Man, a play examining gender roles.

Transition to filmmaking: Do Us Part

In August 2025, LiveWire Calgary reported that Preuss had completed her first feature film, Do Us Part, marking her transition from theatre and acting into directing for the screen. According to the publication, the project began as a script development initiative at Downstage Theatre in Calgary before it shifted form and was reconceived as a full-length film. The piece is Preuss's first feature-length film project, and the LiveWire profile framed it as a significant career pivot from her established work in stage performance into screen authorship.

The development pathway — from theatre workshop to independent feature — reflected an approach grounded in Preuss's longstanding theatre practice, drawing on collaborators and methods from the Calgary independent scene rather than on conventional film-industry development channels.

Recognition

Preuss's most persistent public recognition has come not from awards but from the cultural longevity of Mean Girls. The character of Caroline Krafft, despite limited screen time, has been featured in retrospective coverage by multiple entertainment outlets. Refinery29 ran a 2016 piece focused on Preuss's later appearance compared with her brief 2004 role. TMZ has revisited the actress on at least two occasions, in January 2023 and April 2025, as part of its recurring "'Memba Her?!" and "'Memba Them?!" features that catalogue former screen personalities.

The release of the 2024 Mean Girls musical film prompted renewed media attention on the original 2004 cast, including a January 2024 Global News profile of Preuss as the "Alberta actress" behind one of the original film's memorable secondary characters. The 2025 LiveWire Calgary feature on Do Us Part likewise framed the original Mean Girls role as the recognizable anchor of her public identity, even as the article centred on her new work as a filmmaker.