MACKENZIE
FOY

Mackenzie Foy’s roles often place a young person inside a world whose rules have been set by adults. Her performances give curiosity and uncertainty a clear place in those stories. Born in Los Angeles on November 10, 2000, she worked in commercials and print campaigns before becoming widely recognised as Renesmee Cullen in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012). As Bella and Edward’s daughter, Renesmee becomes central to a conflict in which the adults around her are trying to determine her future.

In Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), Foy plays the young Murph, with Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn portraying later stages of the character’s life. Her relationship with Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, makes the decision to leave Earth personal before the film moves into its enormous distances. Murph wants answers and takes what she observes seriously. Foy gives that insistence an emotional edge, so that a scientific mystery and a child’s need for her father remain connected within the same story.

Animation has given her another way to lead a story. She provides Celestine’s voice in the English-language version of Ernest & Celestine, opposite Forest Whitaker’s Ernest. The friendship between a mouse and a bear grows in a world that teaches the two communities to fear each other. Without a live-action face to carry a reaction, the voice must give a thought its shape. Celestine’s curiosity makes a useful connection to the questioning children Foy plays on screen, while the film’s drawn world gives that quality a different rhythm.

Mark Osborne’s The Little Prince (2015) casts her as the Little Girl in its English-language voice ensemble. Jeff Bridges voices the Aviator who introduces her to the prince’s story. The girl’s experience forms a frame around the adaptation, placing a familiar book beside a contemporary childhood organised around preparation and achievement. Foy’s role helps the audience move between those worlds. The distinction matters in her filmography: she voices the Little Girl, while Riley Osborne supplies the Little Prince’s voice.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) places Foy at the centre of a live-action fantasy as Clara. Directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston, it sends her into unfamiliar realms after her mother leaves her a key. Elaborate costumes, sets and visual effects surround the character, but the viewer needs someone whose changing understanding can guide the journey. Clara gives Foy that task, with Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman among the cast around her.

Black Beauty (2020), written and directed by Ashley Avis, shifts the focus to the bond between a young woman and a horse. Foy plays Jo Green, while Kate Winslet voices Beauty. This contemporary adaptation of Anna Sewell’s novel builds the relationship around loss and the gradual development of trust. It is another kind of listening role: attention is directed toward an animal’s movements and responses. Alongside the imagined worlds of her earlier films, it offers a more physical setting for her interest in characters learning how to connect.