Margaret Qualley Bio
Sarah Margaret Qualley (born October 23, 1994) is an American actress whose career spans independent film, prestige television, and major studio productions. The daughter of actress and model Andie MacDowell and former model Paul Qualley, she first trained as a ballet dancer before shifting her focus to acting in her late teens. Qualley earned early recognition for her role in the HBO drama series The Leftovers and has since built a reputation for thoughtful, character-driven work in projects such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the Netflix limited series Maid.
Early Life and Background
Sarah Margaret Qualley was born in Kalispell, Montana, and raised between the American West and the South. Her parents are actress and model Andie MacDowell and former model Paul Qualley. Margaret has an older brother, Justin, and an older sister, actress and singer Rainey Qualley. Through their mother, the siblings have Scottish ancestry. The family lived on a ranch in Missoula, Montana before moving to the Asheville suburb of Biltmore Forest, North Carolina, when Margaret was four years old. Her parents separated when she was five, and she split her time equally between them, with both households living only a few miles apart for many years.
As a teenager growing up in Asheville, Margaret and her sister were both debutantes, formally presented at the Bal des débutantes in Paris. Qualley left home at fourteen to board at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where she studied dance. She trained as a ballet dancer, earned an apprenticeship at the American Ballet Theatre, and studied at New York’s Professional Children’s School. At sixteen, after receiving an offer to become an apprentice with the North Carolina Dance Theater company, she decided to leave ballet behind. To remain in New York, she began working as a model, walking for designers including Alberta Ferretti, Valentino, and Chanel, and later becoming a Chanel house ambassador.
Path to Acting
Qualley eventually turned her focus toward acting and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art summer program in London. She later enrolled at New York University but left after a single semester to pursue acting roles full time. Her first on-screen appearance came in 2013, when she played a small part in Gia Coppola’s drama Palo Alto, a role she secured after visiting the set of her then-boyfriend, Nat Wolff. That same year, she was cast as a series regular in the HBO television series The Leftovers, a part she would reprise across the show’s second and third seasons. Early film roles followed, including a memorable dance-driven commercial directed by Spike Jonze for Kenzo World, in which she improvised much of the choreography using her classical ballet training.
Margaret Qualley Career
Early Career (2013–2018)
Qualley’s early career was marked by steady work across film, television, and fashion. In 2016, she appeared in Shane Black’s comedy The Nice Guys opposite Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. The following year brought two Sundance premieres: Shawn Christensen’s The Vanishing of Sidney Hall and Maggie Betts’s Novitiate, in which Qualley starred as Sister Cathleen, a young woman questioning her faith while training to be a nun. She also starred as Mia Sutton in Adam Wingard’s 2017 adaptation of Death Note, appeared in Tim Sutton’s 2018 drama Donnybrook, and continued her modeling work with campaigns for Kenzo, Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade, and Celine, alongside editorials for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W, Interview, and Vanity Fair.
Breakthrough (2019–Present)
In 2019, Qualley portrayed dancer and actress Ann Reinking in the FX miniseries Fosse/Verdon, earning nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie and a Critics’ Choice Television Award. That same year, she appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as Manson Family member Pussycat, contributing to a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. She also portrayed Mary Dalton in HBO’s Native Son and starred opposite Kristen Stewart in Seberg.
Qualley expanded into voice and motion-capture work in 2019, playing both Mama and Lockne in Hideo Kojima’s video game Death Stranding. In 2021, she took on the title role in the Netflix limited series Maid, based on Stephanie Land’s memoir, a performance that brought her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. She continued her ascent in 2023, executive producing and starring opposite Christopher Abbott in the thriller Sanctuary and appearing in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo. In 2024, she starred in Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, reunited with Lanthimos and Stone in Kinds of Kindness (playing four characters across three storylines), and earned a second Golden Globe nomination for her work in the body horror film The Substance.
Notable Works and Milestones
Qualley’s signature work includes her defining turn as Jill Garvey in The Leftovers, her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Maid, and her scene-stealing role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations underscore her standing among the most respected actresses of her generation.
Margaret Qualley Award Nominations
Margaret Qualley has received nominations from several major awards bodies across her career, including the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Critics’ Choice Television Awards. Her nominations recognize work in both limited series and film, beginning with her portrayal of Ann Reinking in Fosse/Verdon and continuing through her title role in Maid and her performance in The Substance.
Margaret Qualley Awards Won
Verified major award wins for Margaret Qualley are not available in the supplied sources. Her career to date has been marked by nominations from the Emmys, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, and Critics’ Choice, along with her appointment as a Chanel house ambassador.
Margaret Qualley Family
Margaret Qualley is the daughter of actress and model Andie MacDowell and former model Paul Qualley. Her older sister, Rainey Qualley, is an actress and singer whom Margaret has described as her idol and best friend. She also has an older brother, Justin Qualley. Through her mother, the Qualley siblings have Scottish ancestry.
Personal Life
Qualley lives in New York. She was briefly romantically linked to comedian Pete Davidson in 2019 and later dated actor Shia LaBeouf from 2020 until January 2021; in a 2021 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she stated that she believed the allegations made by his former partner, singer FKA Twigs. On August 19, 2023, Qualley married musician Jack Antonoff. She is the subject of the 2023 Lana Del Rey song “Margaret,” featured on the album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
