AllMovie

Actress Olivia Thirlby accepted one of her earliest on-camera roles when she signed to work for director Paul Greengrass on his acclaimed docudrama United 93 -- and thereby delivered a haunting onscreen evocation of the late Nicole Carol Miller, 21-year-old college student and victim of one of the September 11th hijackings. Thirlby subsequently tackled supporting roles in such productions as David Gordon Green's explosive small-town drama Snow Angels (2007) and Jason Reitman's seriocomedy Juno (2007), then teamed up with Lili Taylor and X-Files stalwart David Duchovny for Vincent Perez's supernatural thriller The Secret (2007). The following year Thirlby made her stage debut in the 2008 off-Broadway production of Farragut North, and in 2009 she played the recurring role of Suzanne, Jonathan's ex-girlfriend, on HBO's Bored to Death. A supporting appearance in No Strongs Attached preceded a leading role in the sci-fi dud The Darkest Hour, and after lending her voice to David Gordon Green's animated comedy series Good Vibes, she landed the plum role of a young artist who upsets the delicate balance of a California household in the low-key drama Nobody Walks. But that was all talk, and Thirlby fans who craved a bit more action got exactly what they were looking for when she teamed with Karl Urban to battle a vicious gang of futuristic drug dealers in Dredd -- a feature adaptation of long-running comic strip that originated in the British science fiction comic 2000 A.D. (and was previously adapted for the screen in a 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle).