Background
Marling was born in Chicago, Illinois to property developer parents John and Heidi Marling. She grew up in Winnetka, Illinois and in Orlando, where she enrolled in the arts program at Doctor Phillips High School.
Actor director writer film producer
Marling was born in Chicago, Illinois to property developer parents John and Heidi Marling. She grew up in Winnetka, Illinois and in Orlando, where she enrolled in the arts program at Doctor Phillips High School.
She graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with degrees in economics and studio art, and was her class valedictorian.
She first gained recognition in 2004 with the documentary Boxers and Ballerinas and later became a Sundance star with the Searchlight movies Sound of My Voice (2011), Another Earth (2011) and The East (2013) which she co-wrote in addition to playing the lead role. She was named "Brit" after her Norwegian maternal great-grandmother. At Georgetown, Marling met her long-time collaborators, future directors Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij.
Marling spent her junior year summer interning for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs as an investment analyst.
She felt a lack of meaning a life spent there would have and later turned down a job offer from the firm, opting instead to move to Cuba with Mike Cahill to film the documentary Boxers and Ballerinas. The documentary gained Marling recognition in 2004, having co-written the film with Mike Cahill and Nicholas Shumaker and co-directed with Cahill.
In 2005, Marling moved with Cahill and Batmanglij to Los Los Angeles Marling went to auditions and was offered roles in horror films, but rejected them.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, she "wanted to be able to cast herself in roles that wouldn’t require her to play the typical parts offered to young actresses, the perfunctory girlfriend or a crime victim." She was discovered by talent agent Hylda Queally.
Marling co-wrote, co-produced, and acted in the 2011 films Sound of My Voice and Another Earth, directed by Batmanglij and Cahill respectively. In 2012, she played Richard Gere"s daughter in Arbitrage. In 2013, she collaborated with Searchlight once again as co-writer and leading role in The East alongside Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgåroad
Directed by Zal Batmanglij and co-written by Marling and Batmanglij, The East is based on the duo"s experience as freegans and their concern with the side effects of prescription drugs.
Marling and Batmanglij collaborated to create drama series The OA that is slated to debut in 2016 on Netflix. lieutenant will be written by Marling and Batmanglij, who will produce the series along with Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner of Plan B, and Michael Sugar of Anonymous Content.
Despite her many roles in films she has co-written, Marling stated she "get a lot more pleasure in acting in other people’s stories" since "one of the great pleasures of acting is surrendering to someone else"s point of view of the world.".