Olivia Wilde

• 1. Introduction

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  Olivia Wilde was 19 years old in 2003 when she married in secret on a school bus, with only a pair of witnesses present. The ceremony took place in Washington, Virginia. She said later that the bus was the one place where the couple could be completely alone. The bride had been born Olivia Jane Cockburn. She would go on to work as an actress, a producer, and a director. Her path runs through a short-lived television series, a long-running medical drama, a Broadway stage, and festival screenings from Venice to Tribeca. How did a girl raised among journalists end up in front of cameras instead? What pulled her toward directing? And why does so much of her work beyond acting point toward real people in crisis? The answers begin with a family of writers, and with a surname she picked for herself.

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• 2. A Family Of Writers

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  Christopher Hitchens, the writer, rented space from the Cockburn family in Washington, D.C., and also served as young Olivia's babysitter. She was born in New York City on the 10th of March 1984 and grew up in the Georgetown neighborhood of the capital. Summers meant Ardmore in Ireland. She holds citizenship in both the United States and Ireland. For a short time the family also kept a house in Guilford, Vermont. She has a sister five years older and a brother nine years younger.

  Her father, Andrew Cockburn, is a British journalist who was born in the London suburb of Willesden and raised in Ireland. Her mother, Leslie Cockburn, whose maiden name was Redlich, is an American journalist and a producer on 60 Minutes. Her grandfather Claud Cockburn was a British novelist. His sons Alexander and Patrick were journalists as well, and her aunt Sarah Caudwell was a writer.

  The Cockburns belong to the British landed gentry, and they claim descent from Admiral Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet. In 1814 he ordered the Burning of Washington. That is an odd fact for a girl who grew up in the very same city.

  She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., and then Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 2002. In high school she began using the name Wilde, taken from the Irish author Oscar Wilde. The choice honored the writers in her family, many of whom had published under pen names. Bard College accepted her, but she put off enrolling three times so that she could pursue acting. She trained instead at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. Her first television credit arrived in 2003, the year after she graduated.

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• 3. Thirteen On House

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  Jewel Goldman was the first character she played on television, in the short-lived series Skin. Real attention came through The O.C., where she appeared from 2004 to 2005 as Alex Kelly, a bisexual bar owner. Alex dated both of the characters played by Adam Brody and Mischa Barton. Film work followed, including The Girl Next Door in 2004 and Conversations with Other Women in 2005. In 2006 she appeared in Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas, Turistas, and Alpha Dog.

  Beauty on the Vine, a political thriller staged off-Broadway in 2007, gave her three characters to play in a single production. That same year she was in The Death and Life of Bobby Z and in the short-lived drama The Black Donnellys. In September 2007 she joined the cast of the medical drama House, the role that would carry her through to 2012.

  Remy Hadley, nicknamed Thirteen, was a bisexual internist living with Huntington's disease. The title character handpicked her for his medical team. Her first appearance came in the episode "The Right Stuff".

  While the series ran, she took film parts too. In Year One in 2009 she played Princess Inanna. In Disney's Tron: Legacy in 2010 she played Quorra.

  In August 2011 came the announcement that she would leave House to concentrate on films. She departed a few months later in the episode "Charity Case". Thirteen returned in May 2012 for two episodes of the series finale, "Holding On" and "Everybody Dies". Her film credits from 2011 and 2012 show how full the schedule behind that exit had become.

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• 4. Film And Stage

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  Ella Swensen, her character in Cowboys & Aliens in 2011, joins others in a fight to save the Earth from evil aliens. That year she also starred in the comedy The Change-Up and appeared in In Time, On the Inside, and Butter. In 2012 she was in People Like Us, Third Person, and The Words, and she played Liza in Deadfall.

  Drinking Buddies, released in 2013, was a film she starred in and executive produced. In The Incredible Burt Wonderstone she played Jane, a magician's assistant. She was Suzy Miller in Rush, a biographical drama about James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Her starring role in Her drew praise from critics, and the film earned recognition from the Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards.

  In 2014 she played Elizabeth Roberts in Better Living Through Chemistry. Elizabeth is a trophy-wife customer who pulls a strait-laced pharmacist into a joyride of sex, drugs, and possibly murder. That year she was also Beatrice Fairbanks in The Longest Week, standing in the middle of a love triangle between an affluent drifter and his best friend.

  Zoe, the medical researcher in The Lazarus Effect in 2015, is killed by accident and then revived with a serum that has unfortunate side effects. That year she also starred in and produced Meadowland, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on the 17th of April 2015. She played Eleanor in Love the Coopers. In 2016 she took the part of Devon Finestra in the HBO rock 'n' roll drama Vinyl.

  In 2017 she made her Broadway debut as Julia in 1984. Previews at the Hudson Theatre in New York City began on the 18th of May. The production opened on the 22nd of June and ran for a limited period until the 8th of October 2017.

  A Vigilante had its world premiere at South by Southwest on the 10th of March 2018, which was her birthday. It reached release on the 29th of March 2019. Life Itself, released on the 21st of September 2018, received negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office. In 2022 she voiced Lois Lane in the animated film DC League of Super-Pets.

  Kathy Scruggs, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who died in 2001, was the character she played in Richard Jewell in 2019. The film was criticized for showing Scruggs offering to trade sex with an FBI agent in return for confidential information. Wilde defended the role and pointed to a sexist double standard, since the FBI agent played by Jon Hamm did not face the same scrutiny. Commentators answered that Scruggs was a real person, while the agent was an amalgamation of several characters from the original script. They added that a film meant to condemn the character assassination of Jewell had done the same thing to Scruggs.

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• 5. Behind The Camera

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  Free Hugs, made in 2011 for Glamour magazine's short film series, was her debut as both director and screenwriter. It was screened at various festivals. In 2016 she turned to music videos. The first was for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, made with cinematographer Reed Morano. She then directed the video for "Dark Necessities" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  The New York Times Center Theatre hosted a live table reading of Hannah and Her Sisters in 2016, which she directed and which drew acclaim. She also played Hannah in the cast. Explaining the appeal, she called the film "just a perfect script, and I knew an audience would enjoy having the chance to focus on the genius of the writing, which is what the Live Reads allow for".

  Booksmart, a teen comedy, reached audiences on the 24th of May 2019 as her first feature as a director. Rotten Tomatoes rated it 97 percent fresh, based on 271 critics' reviews. The Washington Post saw Wilde's filmmaking skills "become more and more evident" as the story went on. It praised a third act "that builds into something beautiful and even transcendent." The Los Angeles Times said the film "leaves you feeling unaccountably hopeful for the state of humanity". The Wall Street Journal declared, "Nothing funnier, smarter, quicker or more joyous has graced the big screen in a long time." At the 35th Independent Spirit Awards on the 8th of February 2020, it won Best First Feature.

  Wake Up, a 2020 short film starring Margaret Qualley, was her next directing project. In 2022 she directed her second feature, Don't Worry Darling, and took a supporting role in it. The erotic psychological thriller concerns a housewife in the 1950s and stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Gemma Chan, and Chris Pine. Katie Silberman wrote the screenplay, and the studio was New Line Cinema. Multiple controversies, on set and off, drew heavy media attention. The film premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival to mixed reviews. Critics praised Pugh's performance, the cinematography, and the production design, but they criticized the screenplay and the direction.

  The Invite, from 2026, is a comedy she both directed and starred in. It is based on the Spanish film The People Upstairs. Rashida Jones and Will McCormack wrote it together with Wilde. Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz star alongside her.

  Universal Pictures has an untitled holiday comedy attached to her as director. A second holiday comedy, Naughty, is also for Universal, together with LuckyChap Entertainment. She is attached to an adaptation of the comic Avengelyne for Warner Bros. Pictures, with Tony McNamara writing and Margot Robbie potentially starring. A television adaptation of the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad is also on her list.

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• 6. Documentary Producer

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  Sun City Picture House, from 2010, follows a community in Haiti that rallies to build a movie theater after that year's disastrous earthquake. Wilde executive produced it, and she has described her parents, an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, as the inspiration for such work. In 2012 she produced the short film Baseball in the Time of Cholera, which explored the cholera epidemic in Haiti.

  Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide was a PBS docu-series from 2012, inspired by the book of the same name by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Wilde was one of six celebrity advocates in it. The series follows her as she learns about the struggles that women face in Nairobi, Kenya.

  Fear Us Women, a 2017 documentary short, centers on Hanna Bohman, a Canadian civilian. Hanna spent three years in Syria as a volunteer soldier fighting ISIS. She served with the YPJ, an all-female Kurdish army, and the film gives an inside look at the women fighting for liberation there.

  Timmy Brennan, an ironworker from Breezy Point, Queens, lost everything he owned when Hurricane Sandy struck. His story is the subject of The Rider and the Storm in 2013, another short that Wilde executive produced.

  Body Team 12, from 2015, follows the team tasked with collecting the dead at the height of the Ebola outbreak. Wilde executive produced it as well. The film won Best Documentary Short at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 88th Academy Awards.

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• 7. Causes And Brands

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  Justin Long and Kal Penn, then her House castmate, joined her in 2008 on a campaign supporting Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee. She also served on the advisory council of 18 in '08, a youth voter organization. A public service announcement she appeared in debuted on the 30th of June 2008 and urged young people to vote.

  In 2011 she took part in a MoveOn.org mock public service announcement "supporting" the rights of the health insurance industry. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworkers' union, praised her for backing its Fair Food program. In 2013 she appeared in a video for Gucci's "Chime for Change" campaign, which sought to raise awareness and funds for women's issues in education, health, and justice. That year she also joined the boards of Artists for Peace and Justice, which provides education and health services in Haiti, and of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. She became a celebrity influencer and activist for RYOT, a media company based in Los Angeles.

  On the 30th of June 2015 she introduced the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in New York City. On the 21st of March 2016 a public service announcement for World Down Syndrome Day was released, in which she appeared with AnnaRose, a 19-year-old from New Jersey who has Down syndrome. She marched in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C., and in the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles. She is widely known as a feminist. In 2022 she recorded the poem "Lies about Sea Creatures" by Ada Limon for For the Birds: The Birdsong Project, whose proceeds benefited the National Audubon Society.

  Revlon made her a global brand ambassador in 2011 and featured her in its commercials. That partnership ended in 2016. In 2013 she wrote an article for Glamour magazine titled "Do's and Don'ts of Turning 30". H&M named her brand ambassador for its Conscious Exclusive campaign in 2015. In May 2017 she became chief brand activist of True Botanicals, a cosmetics and skin care company.

  Proximity Ventures, a New York City venture capital firm that she co-founded in late 2023, backs early and growth-stage companies in both the consumer and enterprise sectors.

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• 8. Marriages And Partners

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  Don Tao dei Principi Ruspoli, an Italian filmmaker and musician from the aristocratic Ruspoli family, was the husband from that secret wedding. Some newspapers called her a princess because of the family's princely title, which the Pope had granted. On the 8th of February 2011 the two announced a separation. She filed for divorce in Los Angeles County Superior Court on the 3rd of March 2011, citing "irreconcilable differences". The divorce was finalized on the 29th of September 2011. She did not seek spousal support, and the two reached a private agreement on dividing property.

  Jason Sudeikis, an actor, began dating her in November 2011. They became engaged in January 2013. They have two children, a son born in 2014 and a daughter born in 2016. Their relationship ended in November 2020. In 2022, while she was presenting Don't Worry Darling at CinemaCon, she was publicly served with court documents about child custody.

  In January 2021 she began dating the singer Harry Styles, whom she met while filming Don't Worry Darling. That relationship ended in November 2022. From 2024 to 2025 she was in a relationship with the actor Dane DiLiegro.

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