All Eyes Are On Erin Moriarty's Transformation

Erin Moriarty was still in her teens when she began appearing in film and television, and her career has blossomed since then. Boasting a substantial roster of screen credits that belies her age (she celebrated her 31st birthday in June 2025), she's best known for her portrayal of Starlight in the iconoclastic superhero series "The Boys." 

With that series ending after its fifth season, Moriarty's services as an actor are in high demand. Case in point: she's part of the cast of "Lips Like Sugar," a high-profile 2026 big-screen thriller, starring alongside Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, and Owen Wilson. Meanwhile, she may be bidding farewell to "The Boys," but she's not exiting that universe completely; she's reprised the role in a spinoff of "The Boys," "Gen V," for that series' second season. 

There's no question that this talented actor has big things in store. To learn more about her journey so far, read on, and it will become clear why all eyes are on Erin Moriarty's transformation.

After her parents divorced, young Erin Moriarty spent half her time living in New York City with her father, whom she credits with her love of acting. '"He's a total cinephile," she told Grumpy, recalling how she'd envision herself onscreen in the movies they'd watch together. She also developed an early love of theater, and her ambition to someday perform on Broadway led her to community theater. "I just took as many of the quote-unquote amateur theater jobs that I could take, for the experience of it, while also being able to stay in school and focus on my studies," she added.

She was just 11 years old when she was cast in the title role in a 2005 production of "Annie," mounted by St. Jean's Players, a community theater based in Manhattan's Upper East Side. A review of the show from Off Off Online offered effusive praise for the future star. "Young Erin Moriarty is superb in the title role ..." the review read, noting it wasn't difficult to envision her appearing on Broadway soon.

"I was really obsessed with musical theater, and that's what really got me interested in acting," Moriarty recalled when speaking with uInterview. Looking back, her big takeaway from the experience was how much she enjoyed it. "I just thought it was so fun," she gushed.

Following her star turn in "Annie," Erin Moriarty began to book roles on television. The first was in 2010, when the 15-year-old was cast as high school student Whitney Bennett in the beloved soap opera "One Life to Live." Moriarty parlayed that experience into primetime television when she was next cast in a 2011 episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." That same year, she also appeared in a supporting role in the big-screen comedy "The Watch," playing the daughter of Vince Vaughn's character. 

As she recalled in an interview with Backstage, her parents were supportive of her acting aspirations, although that was accompanied by a healthy degree of skepticism and uncertainty. "As I think they recognized at that age, they weren't sure whether indulging in my desire to act would be an indulgence and a phase or the beginning of a career, which I resented in the moment," she said. "In retrospect, I appreciate a lot, because I think 15 would've been too young to be thrown into the entertainment industry."

Nevertheless, those television roles from her teenage years may not seem impressive, but they made her believe she could succeed as an actor. That led her to take another step forward to pursue her dream.

It's fair to say that Erin Moriarty hit the ground running once she landed in L.A. As she told Teen Vogue in 2013, when she first arrived, she was taking a gap year, deferring college so she could give herself a year to see if her acting career could catch fire. "I did that for work purposes, so I could film and do a little bit more," she explained.

That happened surprisingly quickly. "I ended up getting a manager out in Los Angeles," she told Backstage, revealing she was just 18 when she booked a major role in an independent movie, "The Kings of Summer." The film was a low-budget indie shot in Ohio, but Moriarty considered it her big break, her first major screen role. She realized immediately how it could propel her career. "I was sent the script, and I read it and loved it," she told Teen Vogue. "The stakes were high because I was nervous."

Acting alongside a cast of unknowns, she and her fellow actors threw themselves into the project, placing no expectations on the outcome. "If it does do well, it's a pleasant surprise," she told Backstage. As it turned out, it did well, becoming the darling of the Sundance Film Festival when it premiered there in 2013. Suddenly, Hollywood's eyes were on Moriarty, catapulting her to a level of fame she hadn't previously experienced.

The visibility Erin Moriarty attained via "The Kings of Summer" led to further opportunities, including a role in a feature film "After the Dark" and becoming a series regular in the short-lived TV drama, "Red Widow." 

It was her next role, however, that took it all to the next level when she was cast as the teenage daughter of Woody Harrelson's character, Det. Marty Hart, in the critically acclaimed HBO hit "True Detective." Interestingly, when Moriarty auditioned for the show, she was seeking an entirely different role. "I auditioned for the part in New York but originally auditioned for the role of Beth, the prostitute that Marty investigated when she was younger and ends up sleeping with her later on," she told the Daily Beast. Instead, series creator Cory Joji Fukunaga offered her the role of Marty's troubled daughter, Beth. "I agreed, of course, because I wanted to work with all the amazing people involved, and it was fun to play a Goth because it's the opposite of how I present myself, and is the opposite of any role I'd been considered for," she said.

Despite the differences between herself and her character, "True Detective" proved to be another key stepping stone in her career. In fact, her performance was so impressive that Moriarty landed in IndieWire's 2014 list of "20 Actors to Watch That Are Under 20."

In 2015, Erin Moriarty joined the cast of a high-profile Netflix show, based on a Marvel comic book: "Jessica Jones," about a super-powered private detective in New York City. Moriarty played Hope Shlottman, a young woman from the Midwest who hires the titular Jessica Jones, played by Krysten Ritter — part of what Ritter has been up to since her exit from "Breaking Bad." 

"So Hope is an all-American girl, very earnest," Moriarty said of her character when interviewed by IGN. "She's innocent to a degree that a lot of other girls aren't ... she's the center of Jessica's very first PI case." She shared even more in an interview with Marvel Entertainment, explaining how Jessica's decision to take on Hope as a client bonds them like sisters throughout the season. 

As viewers learned, however, Hope is a whole lot more complicated than she initially appeared to be, a plot twist that Moriarty loved playing. "It's fun as an actor, it's very dramatic, there's never a dull moment," she said in an interview with Comic Book Resources, as reported by Bustle. "It's like, it's kind of juicy almost. That's an actor's dream to have those kind of dramatic storylines."

In tandem with her role in "Jessica Jones," Erin Moriarty's star continued to rise. She was cast alongside scandal-plagued movie star Mel Gibson in "Blood Father," a big-screen thriller in which Gibson stars as an ex-convict, and Moriarty as his daughter. That character, she told Brieftake, was "much, much, much darker than myself ..." Embracing that darkness proved to be a game-changer when it came to the kind of roles she envisioned herself playing. "Once I proved to myself that I could play that, because I formerly played the role of the love interest and maybe characters that are similar to myself ... it gave me the confidence moving forward to play that in future roles," she added. 

That film came out the same year as "Captain Fantastic," an acclaimed drama in which she co-starred with Viggo Mortensen. In fact, her film work during this period was as eclectic as it was prolific, including the horror movie "Within," the CGI-filled "Kong: Skull Island," the made-for-TV "Controversy," and female-led sports drama "The Miracle Season," which found her sharing the screen with Oscar winners Helen Hunt and William Hurt. Speaking with the Associated Press, Moriarty said she was hopeful that the film would inspire other films with a theme of female empowerment. "I don't like that this film is the anomaly right now ..." she observed. "But I'm happy that we're getting out there, and I hope that this catalyzes more stories like that."

When Erin Moriarty appeared in "Jessica Jones," she wasn't the one with the superpowers. That was not the case when, in 2017, she was cast in "The Boys," a high-profile series for Amazon's Prime Video in which she played Annie Campbell, a.k.a Starlight, so named for her ability to shoot lightning blasts from her eyes.

When she read the script, Moriarty immediately understood that she would be perfect for the role, a feeling that only grew stronger when she auditioned for it. "I put myself on tape and I read that monologue and it clicked, and I knew that no matter what, whether or not I booked the role, I got it, I got her, I understand," she told BriefTake of the connection she immediately had with the character. Annie, she explained, was not all that different from her, noting that "she's earnest, but she's also not a doormat and she is very genuine with her intentions, but she's not naïve, you know?"

Over the course of that first season, the character toughened up while being in the presence of some super-powered folks whose appalling actions were often far from heroic. "I really had to kind of put myself in her shoes, in her psyche, and go through what she went through," Moriarty told ScreenGeek. 

As a woman in the midst of a testosterone-fuelled superhero series, Erin Moriarty unfortunately encountered the dark side of fandom. Ironically, Moriarty found herself mocked by male viewers — who apparently missed the point about a show that served as a thinly veiled critique of toxic masculinity. As a 2022 essay published on Medium pointed out, Moriarty's Instagram comments were filled with misogynistic trolling from so-called fans.

Moriarty responded in a firmly worded Instagram post, subsequently deleted but preserved for posterity via Vulture. "I do feel silenced," she wrote, referencing the Medium essay. "I do feel dehumanized. I do feel paralyzed. I've put blood, sweat, and tears into this role (over & over & over again). I've grown UP in this character's shoes (*emphasis on grown up – we change & evolve mentally AND physically). This does break my heart – I've opened up a vein for this role and this kind of trolling is exactly what this role (Annie) would speak out against."

Much like Starlight, Moriarity proved she had no problem standing up to herself when circumstances warranted. That tendency to clap back at critics would serve her well when a well-known media figure placed a target on her back by making a nasty allegation.

In a 2024 edition of her podcast, Megyn Kelly discussed young female celebrities who, she claimed, had undergone plastic surgery. At one point, she showed a photo of Moriarity she claimed had been taken within the past year, and another more, recent one. "It's not about an objection to plastic surgery, it's about an obsession with turning yourself into this fake version of yourself," Kelly declared, claiming that "The Boys"' Moriarty looks nearly unrecognizable now. "I find it like a sign of mental illness," Kelly sniped.

Moriarty was outraged and fired back with both barrels, demonstrating she was among the many celebrities who can't stand Megyn Kelly. In a lengthy Instagram post (since deleted), Moriarty took a shot at her credibility as a journalist. "Megyn used a photo taken 'a year ago' according to her, that had in actuality been taken about a decade ago before I was of LEGAL DRINKING AGE (I'm about to turn 30) as an example (maybe do some research that would take 30 seconds)," she wrote, via Deadline.

According to Moriarty, she'd recently lost a bit of weight, and when the "after" picture had been taken, she'd just had her makeup done, a process that included significant contouring. Ultimately, she felt that Kelly's malicious and unfounded accusations had crossed a line. "This is becoming harassment," she added. "This is becoming false news."

Megyn Kelly's bogus accusation of Erin Moriarty's plastic surgery was only the beginning, sparking a tsunami of nasty comments on social media as internet trolls began to pile on. "I'm horrified by the reaction, the reductive assumption," Moriarty wrote in an Instagram post responding to Kelly, via The Independent. "You've broken my heart," she told her followers. "You've lost the privilege of this account."

And with that, she deactivated her account, although it didn't stay that way for long. A week later, she returned to social media, issuing a post via Instagram Stories (as reported by The Independent) to fans who'd reached out to share their support. She encouraged those who'd written to her to keep it coming, and asked those who hadn't to share their stories with her in the hopes of providing an online space for healing. "I do believe we have a long way to go," she wrote. "In the meantime: talk to me. I wanna hear. Safe zones, empathy and/or sympathy, and catharsis: a medicinal combo. Trust me."

From the outside looking in, Erin Moriarty appeared to be living the charmed life of an on-the-rise Hollywood star. The reality, however, proved to be somewhat darker when, in June 2025, she shared some devastating news about her health. "A month ago, I was diagnosed with Graves' disease," she told her social media followers in an Instagram post, revealing she'd been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that impacts the thyroid gland, resulting in hyperthyroidism. That particular autoimmune disorder, in fact, appeared in the headlines several years earlier, when daytime talk show host Wendy Williams revealed she'd been diagnosed with Graves' disease. 

In Moriarty's case, she believed she would have been diagnosed sooner had she not initially attributed her symptoms to being fatigued and stressed out. While this diagnosis could seemingly be counted among the tragic details about the cast of "The Boys," the situation was quickly addressed. In fact, she noticed an immediate improvement as soon as she began being treated. 'Within 24 hours of beginning treatment, I felt the light coming back on. It's been increasing in strength ever since," she continued. 

She concluded her missive by urging others who've been experiencing similar symptoms to seek medical advice to find out if Graves' disease could be the culprit. "If yours is dimming, even slightly, go get checked," she wrote. "Don't 'suck it up' and transcend suffering; you deserve to be comfy. S***'s hard enough as is."

All good things must eventually end, and so was the case with "The Boys." In 2024, series creator Eric Kripke announced plans to end the violent superhero series after S5, with that final season slated to debut sometime in 2026. Shooting her final scenes for the show proved to be emotional for Erin Moriarty, who shared her feelings via Instagram. "The tears have begun," she wrote in the caption accompanying a photo of herself crying. "I said goodbye to most of my work family today and I'll be ready to smile about it when I'm ready to smile about it," she added.

During an interview with Awards Radar, Moriarty reflected on her five seasons on the show, a journey that encompassed most of her 20s. "I did the math the other day, [and] this show is [going to] go on for a long period of my life," she said. "In other words, I started it when I was 23, and I am about to be 30. I grew up on the show ..."

Looking back, Moriarty admitted that being part of the show and working closely with her fellow actors affected her in a deep and profound way. "So, it's been cathartic, amazing, fun, and growing up with those people around me — that cast," she told The Amazing Fashion Magazine. "And in that role has just been a very impactful experience."