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Anna Chlumsky

Anna Chlumsky has built the kind of screen career that comes with more than one beginning. Born in Chicago on December 3, 1980, she entered show business early, first modeling alongside her mother before taking a small role in the John Candy comedy Uncle Buck. Her breakthrough arrived with My Girl in 1991, followed by My Girl 2 in 1994. As Vada Sultenfuss, Chlumsky earned praise while establishing herself as a young performer capable of carrying a film. Roles in Trading Mom and Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain followed during the 1990s. Rather than move directly from child stardom into an adult acting career, Chlumsky stepped away. She studied International Studies at the University of Chicago, graduating in 2002, and later worked as a fact-checker for the Zagat Survey and as an editorial assistant at a HarperCollins science fiction-fantasy imprint. Finding publishing unsatisfying, she trained at Manhattan's Atlantic Acting School and returned to acting. That second chapter gradually revealed the range of her comic timing and dramatic instincts. Chlumsky appeared on television in Law & Order, 30 Rock, Cupid, White Collar, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Hannibal. On film, she played State Department assistant Liza in Armando Iannucci's political satire In the Loop. The collaboration led naturally to her best-known adult television role: Amy Brookheimer, the fiercely driven aide she played opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus on HBO's Veep from 2012 to 2019. Chlumsky has kept one foot onstage as well, appearing in productions including Balm in Gilead, Unconditional, 3C, You Can't Take It with You and Living on Love. Her later television work includes Dr. Katie Herman in Halt and Catch Fire, a main role alongside Julia Garner in Inventing Anna, and the voice of Charlotte Pickles in the 2021 Rugrats revival. Across film, television and theatre, her career is defined not simply by an early breakthrough, but by the deliberate and successful return that followed it.