Margaret Qualley – Biography, Age, Career, Net Worth

Introduction

Margaret Qualley has been in front of the camera for not much more than a decade, but she’s already got one of the more eclectic résumés in contemporary American cinema. She’s been a teenage cult follower, a struggling single mom, a Broadway dancer, a deep-sea operative, a woman whose body literally turns against her—often in the same two or three year stretch. This restlessness is no accident. It’s the work of a performer who abandoned a promising career in ballet for something less predictable, and has spent every year since proving the gamble paid off.

Margaret Qualley — Biography

My Childhood Split Between Montana and North Carolina

Sarah Margaret Qualley was born on October 23, 1994 in Kalispell, Montana, the youngest of three children of actress and model Andie MacDowell and former model and rancher Paul Qualley. Her early years were spent on a family ranch near Missoula and when she was four years old, the family moved to Biltmore Forest, a suburb of Asheville, North Carolina. Her parents divorced the next year and for a long period of her childhood she split her time between two households a few miles apart. She was raised with her older brother Justin and her older sister Rainey, who would later become an actress and singer in her own right. Margaret and Rainey were both presented as debutantes at the Bal des Débutantes in Paris when they were teenagers, a detail that hints at the strange combination of small-town upbringing and international exposure that shaped her adolescence.

From the Ballet Barre to the Runway of Modeling

Qualley was a serious student of classical ballet long before she thought of acting. At fourteen she was out of the house, boarding at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, diving into dance training that would lead to an apprenticeship with the American Ballet Theatre and further study at New York’s Professional Children’s School. She has since described that period as formative in a way most people don’t expect: ballet offered her discipline and structure, but it also taught her, slowly, that she didn’t want the discipline of dance to define the rest of her life. At 16, she began dipping her toes into the modeling world, walking a runway show for Italian designer Alberta Ferretti at New York Fashion Week, a detour that gave her a different view of the entertainment industry before she ever stepped foot on screen.

According to many estimates, it’s around $3 million. Her income as an actress has been supplemented through her endorsements and modelling work. In the first years, she modelled part-time and started modelling before her acting.

Margaret Qualley’s Net Worth

According to many estimates, it’s around $3 million. Her income as an actress has been supplemented through her endorsements and modelling work. In the first years, she modelled part-time and started modelling before her acting.

The accident that was a debut that changed everything

Qualley’s dabbling in acting was somewhat accidental. Coppola cast her on the spot in a supporting role during a visit to a friend on the set of Gia Coppola’s directorial debut, “Palo Alto,” in 2013. The film is based on a collection of short stories by James Franco, and was Qualley’s first foray into a craft she had never been formally trained in. A year later, she landed a recurring role on HBO’s haunting drama The Leftovers (2014-2017) as Jill Garvey, the troubled teenage daughter of Justin Theroux’s character. One of the projects most responsible for putting Qualley on the industry’s radar, the series focused on the unexplained disappearance of two percent of the world’s population. It was an opportunity for Qualley to explore grief and teen angst in a long story arc.

Range Expansion in the Late 2010s

The next few years were a conscious effort by Qualley to avoid being typecast. She starred opposite Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in the noir comedy The Nice Guys in 2016, then in 2017 played a much more austere role in Novitiate, as a young woman training to become a nun. She explored genres other actors her age were still avoiding, moving through the Stephen King-esque horror Death Note, the post-apocalyptic survival drama IO, and an adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son. Her most high-profile credit of this period came with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), in which she played Pussycat, a member of the Manson Family who has an unsettling, flirtatious scene with Brad Pitt’s character. The ensemble cast of the film was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award, and Qualley’s brief but memorable role in it opened her up to a much larger audience.

Fosse/Verdon and the Beginning of Awards Recognition

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” raised her profile, but it was FX’s 2019 limited series “Fosse/Verdon” that established her as a serious dramatic talent. The role required Qualley to convincingly inhabit a real performer’s physicality on top of the emotional demands of the script: Qualley played Ann Reinking, the dancer and choreographer who was both a romantic partner and creative collaborator to Bob Fosse. Her work was also nominated for a Critics’ Choice and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. That same busy year, she starred in the Netflix science-fiction film IO, played Mary Dalton in an HBO adaptation of Native Son and was cast as twin sisters Mama and Lockne in Hideo Kojima’s video game Death Stranding, a project that showed her willingness to work outside the film and television world altogether.

Maid, Motherhood Stories and Golden Globe Nomination

Qualley delivered what many consider the defining performance of her career thus far in 2021, starring in the Netflix miniseries Maid as a young mother fleeing an abusive relationship and trying to build a stable life for her daughter while working as a housecleaner. Based on Stephanie Land’s memoir, the series gave Qualley the rare opportunity to act opposite her own mother, Andie MacDowell, who played a fictionalized version of her character’s mother in a role that mirrored the real-life tension between the two. That role garnered Qualley a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Limited Series and a SAG Award nod, establishing her as an actress who could carry a project rather than just elevate someone else.

A Streak of Auteur Collaborations

Since Maid, Qualley’s years have been marked by a search for unusual directors rather than typical star vehicles. She collaborated with French filmmaker Claire Denis on the Nicaragua-set drama Stars at Noon, executive produced and starred in the psychological thriller Sanctuary and joined Yorgos Lanthimos for the surreal Poor Things in 2023 with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo. She reteamed with Lanthimos for the anthology film Kinds of Kindness in 2024, playing four different characters in three different stories. She also starred opposite Geraldine Viswanathan in Ethan Coen’s road comedy Drive-Away Dolls. Then there was her most discussed role to date, in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film The Substance, alongside Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid. The role got her a second Golden Globe nod and cemented her hunger for material that makes audiences truly uncomfortable.

Marriage, Public Life, and Future Plans

Qualley’s personal life has been a steady source of attention off the silver screen, too, particularly her relationship with musician and producer Jack Antonoff. The couple started dating in 2021, got engaged in May 2022, and got married in an intimate ceremony on Long Beach Island, New Jersey in August 2023. Qualley is known for being relatively private about her personal life despite her star being on the rise, a stark contrast to the boldness of her onscreen choices. She shows no sign of letting up: in 2025, Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon and Ethan Coen’s detective comedy Honey Don’t! both premiered at major festivals, and she made a cameo appearance in Happy Gilmore 2. She’s since landed a lead role opposite Glen Powell in the black comedy thriller How to Make a Killing and is lined up to appear alongside Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin in Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, projects that suggest her appetite for offbeat, director-driven work is hardly abated.

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