Katie Findlay

The Ballerina Who Broke Down to Act

Twelve years of classical ballet ended in a doctor's office. Katie Findlay didn't set out for the stages of Vancouver out of early vocation, but a back injury forced her to hang up her pointe shoes at eighteen.

His body said enough.

That forced break pushed her toward acting classes. In 2010, she landed her first professional role in an episode of Fringe, though it was a year later that her face appeared on billboards across the United States. The marketing campaign for The Killing centered on a single question: Who killed Rosie Larsen?

She was Rosie. She played a dead teenager who appeared in home videos and hazy memories. That ethereal presence helped the industry notice her piercing gaze and her innate ability to convey anguish without saying a word.

In 2013, she made a radical change of pace. She signed on to The Carrie Diaries to play Maggie Landers over two seasons. The series was a prequel to Sex and the City and gave her the chance to explore the more cynical side of adolescence in the 1980s.

But her big breakthrough with audiences came in 2014, with Shonda Rhimes's production company. In How to Get Away with Murder, she played Rebecca Sutter, a rebellious, suspicious neighbor who served as a counterpoint to the orderly world of law students. She was paid for fifteen episodes before her character was written out of the main storyline in a plot twist that surprised the actress herself.

Uncomfortable Comedy and a Home in Genre

After leaving the ABC series, she sought out less restrictive projects. In 2017, she joined the cast of Man Seeking Woman, a surreal comedy where she could tap into a comedic streak that no one had fully explored before. She played Lucy, moving through absurd situations that blended modern dating with science fiction elements.

There was no turning back.

Findlay began taking on roles in productions that bordered on the fantastical or the detective genre. She appeared in The Magicians during 2019 and later showed up in Nancy Drew. In 2021, she joined the cast of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, where she got to tap into her artistic training by singing and dancing in a story that turned emotions into musical numbers.

Then came the Western. In 2022, she starred in Walker: Independence, playing Kate, a woman who ran a saloon in Texas in the late 19th century. The series was canceled after just one season of thirteen episodes due to internal changes at The CW network.

It was a technical decision.

In 2024, she returned to romantic television with Love on the Right Course, a movie shot on location in Hungary in which she played a professional golfer in crisis. Filming lasted just three weeks in the outskirts of Budapest.

As of 2025, she is confirmed to appear in the second season of HBO's The Last of Us. In this production, she plays a character named Bel, joining a big-budget shoot that uses motion capture technology and natural locations in British Columbia. The production reportedly paid more than ten million dollars per episode for this stage of the series.