Sophie Nélisse

Marie-Sophie Nélisse was born in Windsor, Ontario, on March 27, 2000.^[1][2][3] She is French Canadian.^[4] Her family moved to Montreal when she was four.^[1][5] Her mother left her job as a schoolteacher in 2013 to act as a talent manager for both Sophie and her younger sister Isabelle, who is also an actress.^[6][7] Nélisse is fluent in French and English.^[1]

Nélisse spent her early years training in gymnastics and signed to a talent agency to make money to pay for the training, but after getting the part of Liesel Meminger in The Book Thief (and subsequent accolades) she shifted her focus to acting.^[8][9]

Besides her Genie Award for Monsieur Lazhar, she won a Jutra Award for her performance and a Young Artist Award nomination as Best Leading Young Actress in an International Feature Film.^[10] She held a recurring role in the Québec sitcom Les Parents [fr] and she also starred in the title role of the 2015 film The Great Gilly Hopkins. In May 2016, Nélisse was present on the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival for the first time to present Canadian thriller movie Mean Dreams.^[11][12][13]

In 2016, Nélisse was one of four actors selected by the Toronto International Film Festival, alongside Grace Glowicki, Jared Abrahamson, and Mylène Mackay for its "Rising Stars" programme, described as an "intensive professional development programme [that] immerses participants in a series of public events and industry meetings during the Festival."^[3][14]

After graduating high school in June 2017,^[15] Nélisse confirmed she wouldn't be enrolling in post-secondary education due to commitments shooting Close in London and Morocco.^[16]

In June 2018, it was announced that she would be the face of Caroline Néron's Fall 2018 jewelry line.^[17] In a L'actualité series about "Being 18 years old in 2018", Nélisse spoke about entering adulthood in the era of the Weinstein effect, and deplored that when she announced she was looking for "more mature roles", she was quickly offered multiple roles where her characters would be raped and that scenarios she receives almost always include sexual elements.^[18] One of these instances was when she turned down the sexually charged lead role in Fugueuse, in which Ludivine Reding was eventually cast as Fanny, the titular teenage runaway who ends up a sex trafficking victim.^[19]

In November 2019, it was announced that she was cast as Shauna Shipman in the Showtime psychological thriller series Yellowjackets.^[20][21] The series debuted on Showtime on November 14, 2021.^[22] The second season premiered on March 26, 2023,^[23] and the third season premiered on February 14, 2025.^[24]

In 2023, she starred as Irena Gut, a Polish nurse who helped to shelter and protect Jewish people during the Holocaust by hiding them in the cellar of the home where she was employed as a housekeeper by German Army officer, in Irena's Vow.^[25] It premiered in the Centrepiece program at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in September.^[26][27]

On April 18, 2025, the author of the book Girl in Pieces, Kathleen Glasgow, confirmed that Courtney Eaton and Sophie Nélisse bought the film rights to the book.^[28][29] Nelisse portrays Rose Landry in the Canadian sports romance television series Heated Rivalry (2025-current).^[30]