Clea Duvall
Clea Helen D’Etienne DuVall (born September 25, 1977), the American actress, writer, producer, and director, known for her appearances in the films The Faculty (1998); She’s All That; Girl, Interrupted (all 1999); Identity, 21 Grams (both 2003); The Grudge (2004); Zodiac (2007); Conviction (2010); and Argo (2012).
On television, she played Sofie in Carnivàle (2003–05), Audrey Hanson in Heroes (2006–2007), Wendy Peyser in American Horror Story: Asylum (2012–2013), Emma Borden in The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015), Marjorie in Veep (2016–2019), and Sylvia in The Handmaid’s Tale (2018–2019).
In 2016, at age 39, DuVall made her feature debut with The Intervention, which she also wrote and co-produced.
From 2016 to 2019, she played Marjorie on the HBO series Veep, for which she was twice nominated—along with co-stars—for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, winning in 2018.
In 2018, DuVall appeared in an episode of the Hulu drama series The Handmaid’s Tale. She also starred in the independent comedy All About Nina, alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
DuVall identifies herself as a lesbian; she came out in 2016.
DuVall grew up loving Christmas movies, but her experience as a queer woman was never depicted onscreen. So after more than two decades as an actress, she decided to stop waiting around.
With Happiest Season, which she co-wrote and directed, DuVall made history by creating the first holiday rom-com about a same-sex couple to hail from a major studio (Sony’s TriStar Pictures and eOne sold the feature to Hulu).
A semi-autobiographical take on DuVall’s own experiences with her family, the coming-out story centers on Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart as a couple navigating a Christmas break with conservative parents.
It struck a chord with audiences, breaking premiere records for the streamer with the most viewership for any original film during its debut weekend.
