What You Don't Know About Julia Garner
Long before hitting the age of 30, Julia Garner carved out an impressive onscreen résumé of roles in film and television. In fact, Garner was just a teenager when she landed her first film role, in the 2011 indie drama "Martha Marcy May Marlene," which she followed with a stunning array of attention-grabbing performances in various projects.
Among these: a 15-year-old girl lured into an affair with a Soviet spy in FX hit "The Americans;" the "Walking Dead"-obsessed daughter of a woman who murders her mom's con-man boyfriend in true-crime drama "Dirty John;" no-nonsense Missouri teenager Ruth Langhorne, who becomes embroiled in the lives of a money-laundering couple in acclaimed Netflix drama "Ozark;" and her subsequent Netflix project, starring in the limited series "Inventing Anna," based on the true story of how a woman calling herself Anna Delvey bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the wealthy elites she befriended by impersonating a German heiress.
Thanks to those roles and others — and not to mention the future projects in which she will no doubt continue to dazzle viewers — Julia Garner has become a force to be reckoned with as one of Hollywood's hottest young actors. While fans may think they know all about this talented star, there's still much that can be learned by reading on to delve into the untold truth of Julia Garner.
She began acting as a way to 'overcome shyness'
For Julia Garner, a career as an actor was both something of a complete fluke, yet also something that she'd been unwittingly working toward for her entire life. Per Rolling Stone, a "severe learning disability" impacted her from an early age and she "couldn't read until she was 10 years old." She developed coping mechanisms to try to help prevent the embarrassment of revealing how little she understood in the classroom. "I almost had to learn how to act even from that age, act like I knew and I could understand what everybody was talking about," she explained.
That learning disability also left Garner with deep insecurities. "Even after I learned how to read, it still affected my confidence to the point where I was so shy. Everything that I said, I felt stupid," Garner said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "I started taking acting classes to overcome my shyness, and I fell in love with it."
She began taking those classes when she was 15, she told The New York Times, and "really liked how it felt." In fact, she revealed to Rolling Stone, all that pretending she'd done in school had been unintentional preparation for her future career. "My whole life in a weird way was prepping me to do what I'm doing now," she shared.
Her mother was a TV comedy star in Israel
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Julia Garner grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of artist/teacher Thomas Garner and Tamar Gingold, a therapist. According to the outlet, Gingold had previously been a comic actor who starred in a sketch comedy show in Israel, described as being "similar to 'Saturday Night Live.'"
Ever the performer, Gingold would, as noted in Rolling Stone, use telemarketer calls as an opportunity to showcase characters, including "the family's harried Russian babysitter." It wasn't long before Gingold enlisted her daughter in the telemarketer-torturing antics. "The guy would be like, 'OK, I'll call back,' and he would never call back," Garner recalled. "Telemarketers stopped calling our house phone."
In addition to a possible genetic predisposition to acting, another thing that Garner received from her mother is her Jewish faith. In a panel discussion titled "What Does Ozark Teach Us About Sin and Repentance?" for American Jewish University, Garner discussed how her Judaism has informed her own personal values. "As my grandma would always say, as long as you follow the Ten Commandments and have good values, you're a good Jew," said Garner. "One day when I have kids, there's only two things I ask for: that they'll be healthy and that they'll be mensches."
She feels she's a better fit for 'freak' characters
It didn't take Julia Garner long to realize that her acting career was going to be more niche than mainstream. She once told Elle, "If I auditioned for a role in a high school, I wouldn't get the cheerleader, I was always going to get the mute girl in the corner that's like the freak, that was my bread and butter."
However, as Garner told Vulture, she also considers herself fortunate that she's been able to avoid those stereotypical roles as "young girl love interests, or cheerleaders, or mean girls, or the shy girl in the corner reading a book at a party who doesn't know how pretty she is, but she's really a beauty." She also said that she has never expected to be picked for any of those character types. "Not that I'm ugly, but I'm not Hollywood-standard beautiful or that simple beauty," she continued. "I was kind of weird looking, different looking. Especially at 16, I had weird curly hair and I had a gap tooth." So instead of playing cheerleaders and prom queens, she joked, "I get cult members. I get pregnant Mormon girls. I get cannibals. I got a girl who was in love with a KGB secret agent who wore weird glasses."
She's married to a famous musician
One thing about Julia Garner that her fans may not realize is that she's married — and that her husband is a rock star. In May 2019, Garner announced her engagement to Mark Foster, frontman of Foster the People, known for 2011 hit "Pumped Up Kicks." Later that year, reported People, the couple tied the knot.
Foster and Garner met in Park City, Utah, where they were both attending the Sundance Film Festival and got to talking, recalled Vogue. Just a handful of months after they met, Garner told the magazine, the couple "took a road trip up to Montana to get away from the city." And at one point during their adventure, Foster popped a certain question. "He read me a poem he had written to me, and when he finished, he dropped to a knee and asked me to marry him," she said.
When it came time to plan their nuptials, Garner and Foster got hitched at New York City Hall. Describing the wedding celebration as "intimate," Vogue noted that the couple eschewed the services of a wedding planner, instead trusting the planning to Garner's mother. Following the ceremony, guests joined the bride and groom for dinner at a local restaurant and headed to Public Hotel for the reception. "That's where we cut the cake, had our first dance, and celebrated for the rest of the night," said Garner. A casual and cool evening for a casual and cool celebrity couple.
Her hair turned curly when she was a preteen
Arguably the most distinctive feature boasted by Julia Garner is her tightly curled hair. However, her trademark curls weren't always there. "When I was like 12, suddenly my roots started growing out curly and the ends were straight," she told The Cut of the sudden change that overtook her hair in childhood. "It looked like a rat's nest — it was disgusting. I went to the hairdresser to fix it and he had to cut all my hair super short, so that all of my hair could be curly." The drastic hair transformation, she recalled, "was one of the weirdest experiences that I've ever had in my life. I went to school the next day and everyone was looking at me like, Who's the new girl? My best friend didn't recognize me."
Speaking with New York Magazine, Garner revealed that she still uses the same product on her hair that she used when it first became curly: Aveda be curly Curl Enhancer. "I've tried different products here and there for whatever reason, but this is what I always come back to," she said of her go-to haircare product. "When it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The fashion icons who influenced her own personal style
Julia Garner has turned heads at plenty of red carpets, to say nothing of the Met Gala, thanks to a personal style that she has managed to completely embody. That sense of style, she told The Cut, came to her early in life, when she "started wearing super red lipstick when I was like, 14. I just feel like a lot of boys were like, 'What're you wearing lipstick for? Are you trying to like, impress us?' And I'm just like, 'No, I'm wearing it for myself.'"
Profiled by Vanity Fair, Garner listed the three fashion legends who have most influenced her own style: "Audrey Hepburn, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Diane Keaton." Speaking with Harper's Bazaar, she listed one more. "My grandmother was my style icon," she declared. "What I love about that generation is that they're always dressing up. And I think there's something really nice about that because it's a sign of respect."
Her own personal style, she explained, may have its roots in the elegance of years gone by, but she also likes to add a twist that makes an outfit authentically her own. "I'm not crazy about cookie-cutter stuff, even if it's really beautiful," she said. "I like it when my outfit has edge to it."
The extreme lengths she went to perfect her Ozark accent
Not only has Julia Garner's portrayal of Ruth Langmore in Netflix drama "Ozark" won her two consecutive Emmy Awards, her preparation for the role also demonstrated her commitment to getting the character's very specific Missouri accent just right. As Garner told W Magazine, she wanted the role desperately, admitting to "obsessing over it for like two weeks."
When she auditioned for "Ozark," she was shocked to discover that the other actors up for the role weren't speaking in an accent — while she had meticulously worked on hers. Fearing she'd be perceived as "that actor that is super annoying, so actory," she told The Hollywood Reporter, Garner tried to do it sans accent — but quickly pivoted back to the accent after she realized "she couldn't remember her lines without it." After the audition, she recalled telling her mother, "Yeah, I'm not getting this. This is a nope."
When she ultimately landed the role, Garner went all-in when it came to capturing Ruth's accent. "I wanted to make sure that I did it right, so I just spoke with the accent the whole month before I was shooting," she explained to W Magazine. "I would go to restaurants and I would speak in the accent. When you speak in the accent, the part also gets in you because you're not talking in your regular tone."
She journals as her characters
Nailing an accent is just one way that Julia Garner is able to find her way into the heart of a character. Another way, she revealed in an interview with W Magazine, was by journaling. "I do this thing where I write; I don't write a journal personally, but I have an acting journal where I write as the characters that I'm playing," she said. Using her "Ozark" role as an example, she continued, "I would be writing, 'I don't know how I'm feeling about Marty,' or how I'd be feeling, what's my objective — how you would write personally in your journal, but as the character."
Journaling isn't the only method Garner utilizes to bring herself into character. In a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, she shared a few of her tools, such as getting her hands on a pair of cheap flip-flops — "the kind you get at CVS" — to help her figure out her "Ozark" counterpart's physicality. And hey, these little tricks sure seem to work. As The Times wrote, "Julia Garner hasn't got to where she is as one of Hollywood's most sought-after actresses by half-heartedly getting into character."
Julia Garner finds inspiration from people-watching
When Julia Garner begins honing in on a character, she gains inspiration by observing people who don't realize they're being watched. "One of my favorite things to do is just to sit on a park bench and see how everybody's walking and what their energy is like," Garner explained in an interview with Daily Actor. "My mom and I have this game we play called 'What's their problem?' It's so dark, but you make up problems and scenarios for the people that are walking past you."
That exercise, she explained, has helped her shape the body language of the characters she portrays, such as the gait she developed for Ruth Langmore in "Ozark." Calling it an "angry little walk," she told Daily Actor that it can bring to mind an image of "a little bully on the playground" at times. "I just loved that."
Garner went to even further extremes to play notorious con artist Anna Delvey in Netflix's "Inventing Anna," adding subtle prosthetics and other accouterments. "Everything's fake," Garner told Entertainment Weekly. "I have the wig, butt padding, like, four cutlets — two on each boob." She completed the look with a set of fake teeth, which, as she shared, "made my face rounder." She continued, "[Anna] has much more of a baby doll face."
She grew up watching old movies
When it comes to the performances that have influenced Julia Garner throughout her career, she's a bit of an anomaly. Those influences, she explained in an interview with The Cut, tend to come from movies released decades before she was born, featuring actors who have long since shuffled off this mortal coil. Sharing that she "used to watch Turner Classic Movies all the time" when she was still in elementary school, she remembers being a big fan of horror flicks like "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "Rosemary's Baby." Not exactly Nick Jr. fare.
Absorbing TCM content at an age when her contemporaries would have been viewing Nickelodeon or Disney Channel shows, she told Net-a-Porter, led her to develop "this fascination with actors: Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep."
Asked by The Hollywood Reporter to single out an actor whose career she'd like to emulate, Garner offered an unexpected name: Richard Dreyfuss. "I love a really intense energy on the screen," Garner said of the "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" star. "Your eye just goes straight toward that actor. They don't even have to say much, they don't even have to move their face much, but there's something that almost feels like you don't know what they're going to do next, you're guessing."
Reality TV is important to Julia Garner
In addition to old movies on TCM, Julia Garner also finds entertainment by watching TV reality shows. Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Garner admitted she would typically decompress after a day of filming "Ozark" by watching one of her unscripted faves, "Vanderpump Rules" (her co-star Laura Linney shared she would similarly relax with a little "RuPaul's Drag Race").
Meanwhile, Garner put her reality TV knowledge to the test during a February 2022 appearance on "Watch What Happens Live" when host Andy Cohen quizzed her on a variety of topics related to "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," another of Garner's fave shows. Among the topics upon which Garner weighed in was Whitney Rose's decision to funnel $300,000 of her family's money into rebranding her business. "It's an investment!" Garner insisted. "You have to lose something to gain some." TheAnd when the award-winning actor was asked to share her thoughts on the return of Heather Dubrow to "The Real Housewives of Orange County," she offered an unequivocal response: "I love it! I love her!"
Julia Garner met the real Anna Delvey
Julia Garner dug in for her portrayal of Anna Delvey in the Netflix series "Inventing Anna," based on the true story of how Delvey (real name: Anna Sorokin) managed to con hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the wealthy elites with whom she ingratiated herself.
As Garner revealed during a candid interview with Elle, she was cast rather late in the process, and only had a tight three-week time frame to master Delvey's idiosyncratic accent. In order to get to know the woman she'd be portraying, Garner revealed that she met Delvey while she was behind bars.
"It was really surreal," says Garner of coming face to face with Delvey. "She's very funny, when you meet her in real life ... very likeable, and she wanted to talk, as much as she was able to." After that meeting, Garner came away with the belief that Delvey remained convinced she had done nothing wrong. "I think she just wanted power, and prestige, and success, and she was still thinking like that," Garner observed. "It seemed like her perspective was still that she didn't do anything wrong, that she was just doing everything it took to get to where she should be. I don't think she sees a difference between being hungry, and being ambitious."
She can do some killer impressions
Fans of Julia Garner have likely noticed her gift for mimicking accents. This has been particularly true for her role in "Ozark," and even more so in her portrayal of Anna Delvey in "Inventing Anna." That latter accent, she told Elle, reflects the Russian-born Delvey's attempts at impersonating a German heiress, resulting in a vocal affectation that Garner described as "consistently inconsistent." As Garner explained, she began with a German accent — which "sounds very choppy, almost like every word has a period at the end of it" — and then added the Russian baseline. "I've done many accents before, and I knew at the outset this was the hardest accent I'm ever going to do in my career," she admitted.
Garner's mimicry was also on display during a 2020 visit to "The Tonight Show," where she unveiled her impression of Britney Spears vocalizing. "Oh my god, that's it. Oh my gosh, you got the croak at the beginning. Oh my god," said unabashedly impressed host Jimmy Fallon. Garner then upped the ante with her impression of Gwen Stefani, which she explained was in the "same family" as Spears. After she offered a few lyrics from No Doubt's "Don't Speak," Fallon gushed, "Your body turned into Gwen Stefani just now and your face! That was perfect!"
Juila Garner has an impressive fortune
Since logging her first film credit in the 2011 cult-themed drama "Martha Marcy May Marlene," Julia Garner — who celebrated her 28th birthday in February 2022 — has hit a number of major career achievements. Considering her youth and the fact that she's been acting professionally for a little over a decade, Garner has already managed to set aside an impressive nest egg. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Garner's personal wealth is estimated at a cool $3 million.
While Garner — like most actors — prefers to keep how much money she earns under wraps, it's a given that as her profile grows with increasingly notable roles, so too will her income. According to a 2017 report in Variety, Garner's "Ozark" co-stars Jason Bateman and Laura Linney each earned $300,000 per episode for the dark Netflix drama; while Garner may not have been on the same level of stardom when the series began, the fact that she won two Emmys for the show would certainly have bolstered her salary as the show went on.
And while Garner's salary for "Inventing Anna" hasn't been publicized, Insider reported that Netflix coughed up a whopping $320,000 to Anna Sorokin (a.k.a. Anna Delvey) for the TV rights to her life story; according to the report, Sorokin used a decent chunk of that check to pay for what she owed to the banks and the state.