Jena Malone (; born November 21, 1984) is an American actress and musician. Malone spent her early life in Sparks, Nevada, and in Las Vegas, while her mother acted in local theater productions. Inspired to become an actress herself, Malone convinced her mother to relocate to Los Angeles. After a series of auditions, Malone was cast in the television film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), for which she received Independent Spirit and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and the television film Hope (1997), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She next appeared in the feature films Contact (1997) and Stepmom (1998), winning a Saturn Award for the former.
Malone began the 2000s with the independent psychological thriller Donnie Darko (2001), which became a cult film. She next appeared in the drama film Life as a House and the miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (both 2003), and the dark comedy film Saved! (2004), and established herself as an adult with the historical drama film Pride & Prejudice (2005). She furthered this success with the drama films The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) and Into the Wild (2007), and the horror film The Ruins (2008). She made her foray into action films with Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch (2011), and earned her highest-grossing releases with the role of Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games film series (2013–2015) which won her a Teen Choice Award.
Malone has since appeared in the horror films The Neon Demon (2016), Antebellum (2020), Swallowed (2022) and Consecration (2023), the thriller films Nocturnal Animals (2016) and Love Lies Bleeding (2024), the drama films The Public (2018) and Lorelei (2020) which she executive produced, and the Western film Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024). Her continued television credits include the crime dramas Too Old to Die Young (2019) and Goliath (2021).
Malone was born on November 21, 1984. Her father is of partly Norwegian descent; she also has Irish ancestry. According to Malone, her mother became pregnant with her after a one-night stand with her father, who was married to another woman at the time. Malone was raised by her mother and her mother's girlfriend. "They were lovers", Malone has said. "I had two moms, and it was awesome." She remained estranged from her father for much of her early life but reconciled with him in adulthood.
Malone grew up impoverished; her family relocated frequently and at times was homeless. "We were just so poor," Malone has said. "We'd hop out of apartments, lose jobs, find a cheaper place, get kicked out, live in cars, and live in hotels." By the time she was nine years old, she had lived in 27 locations. Despite the frequent moves, Malone said, "I don't think it was a tough childhood... It prepared me for this strange, gypsy lifestyle of an actor. It's a beautiful thing to give children diversity of where to live and how to live; it makes you believe that security is built within instead of four concrete walls that you call a home".
As a child, Malone first began taking an interest in acting while watching her mother perform in community theater in the Lake Tahoe area. In 1995, she moved to Las Vegas, where she resided with her family for nine months, and began taking acting classes while her mother worked in a call center. She subsequently persuaded her mother to move to Los Angeles so she could pursue an acting career. Malone has said that she and her mother struggled financially in Los Angeles. She was home-schooled from sixth to eighth grade and attended the Professional Children's School in New York City for ninth grade. She has one younger maternal half-sibling, Madison Mae Malone (born 1997) and three paternal half-brothers. After dropping out of high school in 1999, Malone obtained a General Educational Development certificate in 2001.
Malone progressed to professional acting with the film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996). She was nominated at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Debut Performance and at the third Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for her role in the film. From there her roles grew to include several Hollywood features. In 1997, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film for her role in the television film Hope (1997), portraying a young girl growing up in a small town in the 1960s.
After completing Hope, Malone was cast in Robert Zemeckis's science fiction film Contact (1997), playing the child counterpart of Jodie Foster's lead character. For her portrayal she won a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. In 1998, she played the role of an unwed mother who is suspected of murdering her newborn baby in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. The following year Malone was cast opposite Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts and Ed Harris in the drama Stepmom (1998), playing an adolescent girl whose father has remarried and whose mother is dying of terminal cancer. The film was a box office success, grossing over $150 million against a $50 million budget. Malone played Heather Aubrey, the teenage daughter of Kelly Preston in the 1999 movie, For Love of the Game, starring Kevin Costner.
In 2000, Malone played the leading role in Cheaters, a television film which chronicles the true story of a Chicago high school team that cheated in the United States Academic Decathlon. Malone had her first cinematic leading role in the psychological science fiction thriller film Donnie Darko (2001), playing Gretchen Ross, the new girl in town who becomes the girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal's title character. Though the film was not a box-office hit, it later gained notoriety as a cult film. The same year she had a supporting part in the drama Life as a House (2001), portraying the girlfriend of a young man (Hayden Christensen) whose ailing father (Kevin Kline) is building a home. Malone co-produced the independent comedy-drama American Girl (2002), the first feature in which she had top billing, co-starring with Brad Renfro and Alicia Witt as a suicidal young woman whose father is in prison. In 2002 Malone played the part of a Catholic schoolgirl with a painful secret opposite Emile Hirsch in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, also featuring Vincent D'Onofrio and Jodie Foster. In 2003, Jena appeared as "ferry girl" in Cold Mountain, and played Becky Pollard in the thriller The United States of Leland.
Malone had top billing in the dark comedy Saved! (2004), in which she portrayed a Christian high school student who discovers her boyfriend is gay. The same year she starred in the ecological-themed independent thriller film Corn, about a young woman who returns to her family's farm to find that their sheep are being driven mad by corn modified to be immune to pesticides. Ronnie Scheib of Variety praised her performance, writing: "With Corn Jena Malone proves conclusively that she can carry a movie."
Malone was subsequently cast as Lydia Bennet in Joe Wright's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (2005). Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, "Malone, as the saucy, boy-crazy youngest daughter, Lydia, offers an amusing caricature of teenage idiocy and entitlement." The same year she had a supporting role in Rebecca Miller's drama The Ballad of Jack and Rose.
In 2006, Malone made her Broadway stage debut as Sister James in a production of the Tony Award-winning play Doubt. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that Malone "slides effortlessly and appealingly into the part of the dewy, impressionable Sister James." She also appeared in films, co-starring with Chloë Sevigny in filmmaker M. Blash's improvised feature Lying (2006), playing one of several women attending a precarious weekend gathering. Malone followed this with supporting roles in the independent comedy The Go-Getter (2007), playing a young woman reunited with her middle school crush, and the biographical drama Into the Wild (2007), in which she portrayed the sister of Chris McCandless.