Amanda Michelle Seyfried ( SY-fred; born December 3, 1985) is an American actress and singer. Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she began modeling at age 11 and ventured into acting at 15 with recurring roles as Lucy Montgomery on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns (1999-2001) and Joni Stafford on the ABC soap All My Children (2003). Seyfried gained prominence following her feature film debut in the teen comedy Mean Girls (2004) and her recurring role as Lilly Kane on the UPN television series Veronica Mars (2004-2006). She went on to have supporting roles in independent films such as Nine Lives (2005) and Alpha Dog (2006), and portrayed Sarah Henrickson on the HBO series Big Love (2006-2011).
Seyfried has had starring roles in a number of successful films, such as the musical Mamma Mia! (2008), the horror film Solstice (2008), the dark comedy Jennifer’s Body (2009), the erotic thriller Chloe (2009), the romantic drama Dear John (2010), romantic comedy Letters to Juliet (2010), the romance horror Red Riding Hood (2011), the science fiction action film In Time (2011), the mystery thriller Gone (2012), the biographical drama Lovelace (2013), the romantic comedy The Big Wedding (2013), the Seth MacFarlane comedies A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) and Ted 2 (2015), the fantasy film Pan (2015), the dramas Fathers and Daughters (2016) and First Reformed (2017), the comedy The Clapper (2017), the science fiction film Anon (2018), the crime comedy Gringo (2018), the musical Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), and the comedy drama The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019). She has also occasionally done voice-over work in animation such as Epic (2013) and Scoob! (2020). In 2021 she played a starring performance in the sinister Netflix film Things Heard & Seen
For her role in the musical Les Mis rables (2012), Seyfried won the Satellite Award for Best Cast – Motion Picture and was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. She garnered critical acclaim for her portrayal of actress Marion Davies in the biographical drama Mank (2020), which earned her nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.