Katherine Waterston

Katherine Waterston was born in Westminster, London,^[4] the daughter of American parents, Lynn Louisa (née Woodruff), a former model, and Sam Waterston, an actor.^[4][5][6][7] She is a middle child, with a sister who is an actor, and a brother who is a director.^[8][9] She also has an older paternal half-brother, actor James Waterston.^[9][10]

Raised in Connecticut,^[8] Waterston graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, Connecticut, in 1998.^[11] She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.^[4]

Waterston's first starring role on film was in the 2007 independent drama The Babysitters, alongside John Leguizamo and Cynthia Nixon.^[12][13] Also in 2007, Waterston performed in the play Los Angeles by Julian Sheppard.^{[citation needed]} The following year, she acted in Kindness, a play by Adam Rapp.^[14] In 2010, Waterston played Gena in the original Off-Broadway production of Leslye Headland's Bachelorette, the role played by Lizzy Caplan in the 2011 film version. In 2011, she played Anya in the Classic Stage Company revival of The Cherry Orchard.^[15] Also in 2011, she performed in Rapp's Dreams of Flying, Dreams of Falling at the Classic Stage Company.^[16]

After supporting roles in films including Enter Nowhere (2011),^[17] Being Flynn (2012), The Letter (2012) and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), Waterston was cast in the 2014 crime film Inherent Vice, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.^[18][19] The film and her performance received generally positive reviews from critics.^[20] The following year, she appeared in Queen of Earth^[21][22][23] and played Chrisann Brennan in director Danny Boyle's biographical drama Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender.^[13][24]

In 2016, Waterston was cast as Tina Goldstein in the fantasy film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opposite Eddie Redmayne. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and became a commercial success, grossing $814 million worldwide.^[25] Waterston reprised her role in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018,^[26] and had a short part in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022).^[27][28] In 2017, she starred alongside Fassbender for director Ridley Scott in the science fiction horror film Alien: Covenant.^[29][30] That year she also starred in Steven Soderbergh's heist comedy-drama Logan Lucky^{[citation needed]} and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's historical drama The Current War.^[31][32]

Waterston's next starring roles were in the independent films State Like Sleep (2018),^[33][34] Mid90s (2018),^[35][36] Amundsen (2019),^[37] and The World to Come (2020).^{[19][38][39][40][41]} In 2020, she starred in the British-American horror drama series The Third Day alongside Jude Law.^[42][43][44] In 2022, she joined the cast of the second season of HBO period drama series Perry Mason.^[45]

In 2023, Waterson starred in British film The End We Start From,^[46] for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Performance at the British Independent Film Awards.^[47] In 2023 she also starred in the film Asphalt City^{[citation needed]} and as an MI5 agent in the British spy thriller television series Slow Horses.^[48]

In 2024, Waterson starred as a series regular in the Paramount+ spy thriller series The Agency, based on the French drama Le Bureau des Légendes (2015-2020)^[13][49][50] and in the film Afraid by Chris Weitz.^[51][52] In 2025, she featured in slasher film Fear Street: Prom Queen^[53] and in the British period satirical comedy film Fackham Hall.^[54][55]

As of 2017, by her description during an interview, Waterston held dual citizenship,^[56] British and American.

For a number of years she was in a relationship with American playwright Adam Rapp.^[57][58] His 2011 three-play collection The Hallway Trilogy is dedicated to her;^[59] she appeared as Rose Hathaway in Part 1: Rose in its premiere at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.^[60]

In 2018, Waterston revealed that she was expecting her first child, which she subsequently had.^[61][62][5] She has not made public who the father of her son is.^[61][10]

Waterston is a supporter of transgender rights. She has cited her participation in the Fantastic Beasts franchise as a reason for her being so vocal, and has publicly denounced statements by series creator J. K. Rowling which she considered insensitive to transgender people.^[63][64]