With five movies releasing this year, including two this month alone, actress Katy O’Brian seems to be everywhere.
The Love Lies Bleeding and a series of parts in major franchises, noting that she’s considering “taking things into my own hands” with her career and adding producer to her resume.
“I’m really interested in building something from the ground up,” O’Brian explained. “Franchises aren’t my thing, really.”
Meanwhile, she’s also eager to get audiences “back in the theaters” after working on some major blockbusters with the likes of Tom Cruise, Glen Powell and more.
O’Brian explained that Powell “has a stage right now where he can make movies that speak to large audiences, hopefully, and bring people in. And I think that’s what he’s hoping to do, and I really admire that because that keeps all of us working.”
“But if people don’t go watch it in theaters, and you say you want original content, you have to go watch it,” she added. “You have to go support it. It’s the only way.”
This year alone, O’Brian appeared in The Running Man, Christy, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Queens of the Dead and Maintenance Required. It’s quite the resume for an actress whose credits also include Twisters, The Mandalorian, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Walking Dead.
With such a diverse body of work already under her belt, read on about Katy O’Brian’s career and what she’s taken away from her time in the industry.
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‘Z Nation’ (2018)
Image Credit: Oliver Irwin/Syfy Noting that the state of the industry is “scary for everyone” right now, O’Brian revealed, “I did 5 projects last year. I haven’t worked this year.”
Recalling her first series regular role on the fifth and final season of Syfy’s DJ Qualls that still sticks with her amid the ups and downs of Hollywood.
“He’s like, ‘After every single job, I say, “Well, that might be the last time I ever work again.” Because you just never know in this business,'” recalled O’Brian.
“You can never rest on your laurels here,” she added of advice an acting teacher once gave her. “You have to always be planting seeds because the second that you kind of think that you’re in a cush position, you’ll find a drought, and then you won’t have any surplus or anything like that.”
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‘The Mandalorian’ (2020-2023)
Image Credit: Disney+/Lucasfilm/Courtesy Everett Collection Appearing in multiple franchises, O’Brian made her The Mandalorian, an officer in the Galactic Empire who was tasked with tracking the Force-sensitive infant Grogu.
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‘Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’ (2023)
Image Credit: Jay Maidment/Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection After a 2020 guest arc as Kimball on MCU.
“I came in really late in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I had a really small [part],” she explained. “I had like two lines and stood in the background for a while, and then I think I blew up or something. I don’t know.”
O’Brian added, “And then they de-canonized it or something and I was allowed to be in Ant-Man.”
In 2023, O’Brian appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as Jentorra, leader of the Freedom Fighters in the Quantum Realm.
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‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024)
Image Credit: Anna Kooris/A24/Courtesy Everett Collection Last year, O’Brian’s breakout movie role came alongside Love Lies Bleeding.
Playing bodybuilder Jackie, the character strikes up a romance with New Mexico gym manager Lou (Stewart) while on her way to a competition in Las Vegas, only to get caught up in the danger around Lou’s criminal family.
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‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024)
Image Credit: Anna Kooris/A24/Courtesy Everett Collection -
‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024)
Image Credit: Anna Kooris/A24/Courtesy Everett Collection O’Brian revealed that Edgar Wright saw her in the Rose Glass-helmed film, which inspired him to cast her in The Running Man.
“I guess he just saw Love Lies Bleeding and wanted me in this movie, which I was really excited about cause I’ve always loved Edgar’s work,” she said.
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‘Twisters’ (2024)
Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection After playing mechanic Dani in last year’s Glen Powell in her latest movie The Running Man.
“We’re engaged and we’ll be married—no, kidding,” she joked, adding: “I love working with him. I love the energy that he brings to set, and I think he’s very driven and very motivated to make the most out of a career, and he’s trying to do the Tom [Cruise] thing, we’re trying to get people back in the theaters.”
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‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ (2025)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection After starring alongside Cruise earlier this year in the eighth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, O’Brian praised the “huge collaborative effort” between all departments, calling it “a really refreshing and inspiring set to be on.”
“I really appreciated that the biggest movie star in the world is making everyone sit down and appreciate and respect that,” she said. “And he’s like, go around and ask questions, learn. He’s hoping that people will take the baton.”
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‘Maintenance Required’ (2025)
Image Credit: Matt Squire/Amazon MGM Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection Earlier this year, O’Brian starred alongside Madelaine Petsch and Madison Bailey in Prime Video’s romantic-comedy Maintenance Required, playing flirtatious mechanic Cam.
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‘Queens of the Dead’ (2025)
Image Credit: Shudder/Courtesy Everett Collection In Queens of the Dead, O’Brian stars as Brooklyn club promoter Dre, who the actress thinks was inspired by the co-writer/director.
“Obviously, she wanted to pay tribute to her dad’s legacy,” she said of Tina, whose father George A. Romero pioneered the zombie horror sub-genre.
“But also in her own way, she’s been on the scene,” explained O’Brian. “She’s DJed, she’s been an event promoter, all of these things. So, it was fun to, in a way kind of think, ‘Am I playing Tina right now?’ It felt like an honor to kind of be cast as, essentially who she is in this world. But she just was open for everyone to be creative, had a very clear vision still. And despite how stressful it must have been with the budget and time limits and everything, she just seemed very unfrazzled and just had positive wonderful energy the whole time.”
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‘Queens of the Dead’ (2025)
Image Credit: Shudder/Courtesy Everett Collection O’Brian praised the outcome “very low budget” LGBTQ horror comedy, which premiered last month.
“It was so fun. It was a special energy,” she said. “We were in this building that I think now is condemned. There was no air conditioning, Jersey, hot, sweaty summer. It was so hot, and then I can’t complain cause there’s people in drag and they’re not complaining.”
The actress added, “Everyone was just there for the love of it, the love of the projects, love of the community.”
Noting how the small crew was “able to be resourceful,” O’Brian said, “I was just every day blown away with what everyone was able to bring to the project.”
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‘Christy’ (2025)
Image Credit: Black Bear Pictures Now in theaters, O’Brian plays boxer Lisa Holewyne in Christy, her “first time” playing a real person.
“It was really intimidating because, and the fact that she’s still alive too, and well and very strong, a Hall of Fame boxer—you want to do it right for so many reasons,” she explained.
“And then also, Christy’s story is so inspiring, so heart-wrenching, and so very personal,” added O’Brian. “She was on set regularly, and even Lisa, the person that I was playing, she would stop by. We mostly just goofed around, but she was very gracious with her time, very forthcoming in terms of answering any questions that I had. I just greatly appreciate both their vulnerability and also just their genuine love and goofiness around each other.”
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‘The Running Man’ (2025)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures In Wright’s Stephen King‘s 1982 novel, O’Brian plays Ben’s ( Powell) fellow contestant Laughlin, an expanded and gender-flipped version of the original character, who joins the titular deadly reality show for a chance at winning a fortune.
“I really admired his sense of humor and all of that, even if it’s the apocalypse or whatever,” O’Brian praised Wright. “And his cool cuts, his editing choices, the way he slides sound design, music into everything, I think he just makes for a really unique cinematic experience.”
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‘The Running Man’ (2025)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures Despite seven years of experience as a police officer and 30 in martial arts, O’Brian admitted she didn’t get to do as many stunts in The Running Man “as I’m used to.”
“The coolest thing I think I got to do was a slide across the car hood, and other than that, I was kind of bummed because I would have loved to have had a little more of the action on my own,” she said.
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‘The Running Man’ (2025)
Image Credit: Ross Feguson/Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection O’Brian said that her version of Laughlin is “totally different” from the book version, as well as the original 1987 movie, which starred Yaphet Kotto in the role.
“The book Laughlin character gets like one sentence, I think. It’s just to say, ‘Hey, there are other runners out there, and oops, they died,'” she explained. “So, Edgar wanted one of the runners to be a woman this time, and I don’t know how he got the inspo to make her—well, I do.”
O’Brian continued, “He had three types of runners, right? So, he has the hopeless one, and it’s all about ratings and views and how they select reality TV stars, right? So, there’s the hopeless one, who basically just doesn’t even know how to play the game; the negative one, who knows they have no chance in the world and is just gonna live it up the way they can. And that’s the one that essentially Laughlin is.”
