Rowan Blanchard

 ( 2001 Births ) 

In 2013, Blanchard was cast in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World, a sequel to Boy Meets World, as Riley Matthews, the daughter of Boy Meets World characters Cory Matthews and Topanga Lawrence. She also sings the title song with co-star Sabrina Carpenter, among other songs for the network. The series premiered in 2014, and ran for three seasons until 2017. Although Brian Howry of Variety gave the series a mixed review, he said that Blanchard was an "appealing lead". Max Nicholson of IGN agreed, writing that she had "the same go-getter spunk of predecessor Ben Savage, but she also nails the wide-eyed innocence that made Cory such a lovable lead in the original." He also called the "Girl Meets Rileytown" episode one of her "best performances yet, proving her dynamic range as actress once again." For Girl Meets World, she received nominations at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards, and Young Artist Awards. Also for Disney, she played Cleo in the 2015 Disney Channel Original Movie Invisible Sister.

From 2017 to 2018, Blanchard had a recurring role as Jackie Geary on the ABC series The Goldbergs. In 2016, she was cast in the minor role of Veronica Kiley in Ava DuVernay's film A Wrinkle in Time, an adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same name. Her performance was partially improvised, and Blanchard said "I've never had so much freedom and so much trust from a director ever." It was released in 2018 to mixed reviews.

In March 2019, Blanchard was cast as Alexandra Cavill in TNT/AMC's Snowpiercer, a futuristic thriller series based on the 2013 South Korean-Czech Snowpiercer. The series premiered in 2020, and Blanchard was promoted to the main cast from the second season onwards. She co-stars with Jennifer Connelly, whom Blanchard told TV Insider that "I feel really, really grateful that the show provided me opportunity to work with her because she's been acting since she was a child and I’ve been acting since I was a child." Snowpiercer ran for four seasons with mixed to positive reviews, concluding in 2024.

It was announced in 2021 that Blanchard would co-star with Auli'i Cravalho in the Hulu movie Crush, which was released in April 2022 and became the third most streamed film of its release week. It received generally positive reviews from critics, many of whom praised Blanchard's performance. Tomris Laffly of Variety called her "instantly likeable", and Christy Lemire for RogerEbert.com wrote that both Blanchard and Cravalho "assert themselves confidently with more mature material while still bringing all that well-honed comic timing".

In 2023, Blanchard guest starred on the Comedy drama series Poker Face as Lily Albern.

In February 2018, Blanchard wrote and released the book Still Here. She began writing it in December 2015 and was assisted by her cousin who worked at a book publishing company. According to Blanchard, Still Here is not "specifically about being about being a teenage girl. It's just about growing up, whenever that is."

In April 2018, Blanchard criticized Israel and its military on her social media and shared her own post with a photo of Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi holding the Palestinian flag. In the same post, she voiced support for the Palestinians during the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests. In May 2018, she criticized Israel once again in her social media and shared another photo of Tamimi. She wrote that "Gaza City qualifies under every definition of genocide yet massacred protestors must always be identified as 'peaceful'."

In September 2024, Blanchard and 25 Palestinian and Jewish protestors were arrested outside the United Nations headquarters for disrupting the motorcade of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The protestors wore shirts that labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and called to "stop the Gaza genocide", as well as demanding an end to the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war.