Malina Weissman

The Face of Other People's Memories

Malina Weissman didn't go looking for the camera. The camera found her at a New York modeling agency when she was only eight years old. Before speaking her first line on a film set, she had already worked for international brands such as Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein.

In 2014 Megan Fox needed a younger version of herself for the reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Weissman landed the role of April O'Neil thanks to an obvious physical resemblance and an innate ability not to be intimidated by digital effects.

It was the start of a strange downward trend.

For a time, the industry only saw her as the perfect fit for playing other actresses' younger selves. In 2015 she put on the cape of Supergirl to play a young Kara Zor-El on CBS. But casting directors began to notice that her gaze projected an unsettling maturity for her age.

Weissman didn't act like a little girl. Her on-screen presence forced writers to give her dialogue with greater weight.

She played the daughter of Kevin Spacey in the comedy Nine Lives during 2016. The film was a critical and box-office disaster. It grossed barely $57 million against a budget that nearly doubled that figure once worldwide promotion costs were added.

The Architecture of Misfortune

In 2017, Netflix gave her the role that pulled her out of obscurity and into the flashbacks. Violet Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events required a mix of technical wit and Victorian melancholy that very few actresses of her generation could pull off.

And the project lasted exactly three seasons.

She worked side by side with Neil Patrick Harris in a gothic aesthetic that greatly limited physical expressiveness. Weissman filmed a total of 25 episodes until the series concluded in 2019. That work allowed her to prove she could lead a big-budget production without relying on an adult figure who would steal the spotlight.

Making the leap from teen star to adult actress is a process that often derails many careers in Hollywood. Weissman decided to slow down her release schedule and choose lower-profile projects.

So she stepped away from the major studios for a while.

In 2022 she appeared in the series Evil as Candice. It was a brief appearance, but it helped her move away from the image of the helpless orphan she had been carrying since her years on the streaming platform. The series' dark tone suited her evolution toward a less sugary style.

She shot the thriller The Girl in the Pool in 2024, sharing the bill with Freddie Prinze Jr. The production focused on a domestic thriller filmed almost entirely in enclosed locations to cut post-production costs.

The film was distributed by Quiver Distribution and received an R rating for adult content and strong language. Filming of her main scenes was completed in less than four weeks in Los Angeles.