Anna Faris Bio
Anna Kay Faris (born November 29, 1976) is an American actress and comedian whose bright, buoyant presence has shaped film and television comedy for more than two decades. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in Edmonds, Washington, she studied English literature at the University of Washington before committing to acting full-time. Faris first captured global attention as Cindy Campbell in the hit horror parody Scary Movie (2000) and its sequels, a role that established her as a leading comedic voice of her generation.
Beyond the Scary Movie franchise, Faris has built a wide-ranging career that spans independent dramas, mainstream comedies, animated features, and network television. She is also recognized as the co-lead of the CBS sitcom Mom, the creator and host of the advice podcast Unqualified, and the author of a New York Times bestselling memoir. Her films as a leading actress have grossed more than 1.5 billion dollars worldwide, a testament to her enduring popularity with audiences.
Early Life and Background
Anna Kay Faris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 29, 1976, the second child of Jack Faris, a sociology professor, and Karen Faris, a special education teacher. Her parents, who are natives of Seattle, Washington, were living in Baltimore at the time of her birth because her father had accepted a professorship at Towson University. When Faris was six, the family moved to Edmonds, Washington, where her father later worked at the University of Washington as a vice president of internal communications and headed the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association, while her mother taught at Seaview Elementary School.
Faris grew up with an older brother, Robert, who would go on to become a sociology professor at the University of California, Davis. She has described her parents as ultra liberal and noted that she and her brother were raised in an irreligious but very conservative, traditional atmosphere. At age six, her parents enrolled her in a community drama class for children, an experience that sparked a lifelong love of performance. She enjoyed watching plays and eventually produced her own material in her bedroom with neighborhood friends, often imagining her orthodontic retainer talking to her.
Faris attended Edmonds Woodway High School, where she performed onstage with a Seattle repertory company and in nationally broadcast radio plays. She graduated in 1994 and went on to attend the University of Washington, where she earned a degree in English literature in 1999. Despite her love of acting, she admitted that she never really thought she wanted to become a movie star and continued to act just to earn extra money while hoping to publish a novel one day.
Path to Acting
Faris gave her first professional performance at age nine in a three-month run of Arthur Miller’s play Danger: Memory! at the Seattle Repertory Theater, earning $250 for the role. She went on to play Scout in a production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Village Theatre in Issaquah, Washington, the title character in Heidi, and Rebecca in Our Town. Her theater credits during that period also included productions of Rain, Some Fish, No Elephants, and Life Under Water, building a strong foundation in classical and contemporary stage work.
While still in high school, Faris appeared in a television commercial for a frozen yogurt brand and in a training video for Red Robin. During her time at the University of Washington in 1996, she appeared in the MSN Preview, an interactive CD-ROM promotional video for Microsoft’s MSN 2.0 online service filmed at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. She also took on brief roles in the made-for-TV film Deception: A Mother’s Secret and the independent drama Eden, the latter of which screened at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.
Her first major film role came shortly after college, in the independent slasher film Lovers Lane (1999), in which she played an ill-fated cheerleader. The B-movie received a straight-to-DVD release and mixed critical reception, but the website efilmcritic.com found her the film’s one center of interest. After graduating, Faris had planned to move to London for a receptionist job, but she ended up relocating to Los Angeles at the last minute to pursue acting, eventually landing at a studio apartment at The Ravenswood in Hancock Park.
Anna Faris Career
Early Career (1986–1999)
Encouraged by her parents to pursue acting from a young age, Faris spent her early years in the Seattle theater scene, performing in a range of productions with the Seattle Repertory Theater and Village Theatre. These formative stage experiences gave her discipline, comic timing, and an understanding of live performance that would later inform her on-screen work.
As she moved into television and film, Faris took on small roles in commercials, training videos, and independent productions, including the 1996 Sundance-screened drama Eden and the 1999 slasher film Lovers Lane. These early credits, while modest in scale, marked her transition from regional theater to screen acting and set the stage for her breakout moment.
Breakthrough (2000–2006)
Faris’s breakout role came in 2000 when she starred in the horror-comedy parody Scary Movie, portraying Cindy Campbell, a play on the character of Sidney Prescott from Scream. The film was a major commercial success, ranking atop the box office charts with a $42 million opening weekend and going on to earn $278 million worldwide. For her performance, Faris received nominations for the Breakthrough Female Performance and Best Kiss Awards at the 2001 MTV Movie Awards, and she subsequently reprised her role in Scary Movie 2 (2001), Scary Movie 3 (2003), and Scary Movie 4 (2006).
In 2002, Faris took on the role of the lesbian colleague of a lonely young woman in the independent psychological thriller May, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Later that year, she starred alongside Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams in the comedy The Hot Chick, a modest commercial success that grossed $54 million worldwide. In 2003, she was cast last-minute opposite Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s drama Lost in Translation, where she played a bubbly, extroverted actress. Budgeted at $4 million, the film grossed $119.7 million globally and earned widespread praise, with The New York Times declaring that Faris, who barely registers in the Scary Movie pictures, comes to full, lovable and irritating life as a live-wire starlet.
Faris debuted on the last season of the NBC sitcom Friends in 2004 in the recurring role of Erica, the birth mother of the twins adopted by Chandler and Monica. She also filmed a small part in Ang Lee’s drama Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which she and her co-stars received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 2005, she starred in the comedies Waiting… and Just Friends, both alongside Ryan Reynolds, with the latter earning her MTV Movie Award and Teen Choice Award nominations.
Notable Works and Milestones
Among Faris’s signature works are the Scary Movie franchise, the indie hit Smiley Face, the family comedy The House Bunny, and the CBS sitcom Mom, on which she starred as Christy Plunkett from 2013 to 2020. Her films as a leading actress have grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide, and she has been called one of the most talented comedic actresses of her generation, often compared to Goldie Hawn and Lucille Ball.
Anna Faris Award Nominations
Throughout her career, Anna Faris has earned a wide range of award nominations recognizing her work in film and television. She received MTV Movie Award nominations for Breakthrough Female Performance and Best Kiss for Scary Movie, as well as additional MTV Movie Award nods for Just Friends, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and The House Bunny. For her performance in Brokeback Mountain, she shared a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Her television work on Mom brought her a Prism Award nomination and two People’s Choice Award nominations, and she was also nominated for Teen Choice Awards for Just Friends, Take Me Home Tonight, and What’s Your Number?.
Anna Faris Awards Won
Anna Faris has won several notable awards across her career, particularly for her comedic and voice work. She received the Stonette of the Year prize at High Times magazine’s Stony Awards for her role in the stoner comedy Smiley Face (2007), and was honored with the Star of the Year Award at the National Association of Theatre Owners for her performance in The Dictator (2012). In 2010, Cosmopolitan magazine named her the Fun Fearless Female of the Year. Additionally, her memoir Unqualified became a New York Times Best Seller in 2017.
Anna Faris Family
Anna Faris is the daughter of Jack Faris, a sociology professor who worked at Towson University and later the University of Washington, and Karen Faris, a special education teacher who taught at Seaview Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington. She has an older brother, Robert Faris, who is a sociologist and professor at the University of California, Davis. The family relocated from Baltimore to Edmonds, Washington, when she was six years old, and she has often credited her parents for encouraging her early interest in acting.
Personal Life
Faris married actor Ben Indra in June 2004 after meeting on the set of the 1999 film Lovers Lane. She filed for divorce in April 2007, citing irreconcilable differences, and the divorce was finalized in February 2008. She then began dating actor Chris Pratt in 2007 after meeting on the set of Take Me Home Tonight. The couple married on July 9, 2009, in a small ceremony in Bali, Indonesia, and welcomed a son, Jack, in 2012. They announced their separation on August 6, 2017, and their divorce was finalized in October 2018.
In September 2017, Faris began dating cinematographer Michael Barrett, whom she met while working on Overboard. They became engaged in early 2020 and married in a courthouse ceremony in Washington State in 2021. In January 2025, Faris lost her home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, due to the Palisades Fire. Beyond her personal life, she is also known for her philanthropic work, including a $1 million donation with Pratt in 2015 to a charity providing eyeglasses to underprivileged children and ongoing support for organizations such as March of Dimes and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.
Upcoming Projects
In August 2025, it was announced that Anna Faris would be returning to her role as Cindy Campbell in the sixth installment of the Scary Movie franchise. The film began production in October 2025 and is scheduled for release on June 5, 2026. Her other upcoming projects include the Andrew Niccol film I, Object and the Jon Lucas and Scott Moore comedy feature Spa Weekend.