--- name: "Emily Browning" canonical: "https://film.one/person/emily-browning" fi1m_id: "emily-browning" imdb_id: "nm0115161" tmdb_id: 70456 wikidata_id: "Q288620" roles: ["Actor"] born: "7 December 1988" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-24T20:12:51.083854+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Emily Browning ## Identity Emily Browning - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/emily-browning - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** emily-browning - **IMDb ID:** nm0115161 - **TMDB ID:** 70456 - **Wikidata ID:** Q288620 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Browning, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q288620, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0115161/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/70456 Actor. Born 7 December 1988 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 7 December 1988, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - **Also known as:** Emily Jane Browning - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Browning, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q288620, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0115161/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/70456 ## Coming up - *The Fox* (2026-11-26), as Kori ## Fi1m on Emily Browning > Emily Browning plays young women who look as if they will break and then do not. On screen she is small, still and watchful, and the films around her keep talking over her; the good ones let her be quiet. Frances Shea meets Reggie Kray over tea in *Legend* (2015), and Emily Browning does almost nothing. She sits, she listens, she lets a smile arrive late. Tom Hardy is doing the talking, as he does for most of the film, and yet it was her face we watched, because she is the only person at the table working out what she has walked into. That is the thing Browning does: she thinks on screen, quietly, and waits for us to catch up. The career has been stop-start, and some of the stopping was her own. She began as a child on Australian television from 1998, then went to Hollywood for *Ghost Ship* (2002) and the lead as Violet Baudelaire in *Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events* (2004). Then she went home to finish school. She came back with *The Uninvited* (2009), *Sucker Punch* (2011) and, the same year, Julia Leigh's *Sleeping Beauty*, and has said she would "rather make an interesting film that gets people talking, that maybe some people hate, than make the kind of 'entertaining' film that everyone feels ambivalent about". The choices since bear that out: *Pompeii* (2014), *Legend*, four years as Laura Moon in *American Gods* (2017–2021), and lately comedy at home in *Class of '07* (2023). The pattern critics notice, and we notice too, is the doll who turns out to have a spine. She looks as though she will break, the parts lean on that, and the interest is always in the moment the fragility turns out to be a decision. In *Legend* it is the point where she stops being the girl who fell for Reggie and becomes the woman who is frightened of him, and Browning makes the change in her eyes and shoulders without a line to help her. We felt her fear well before the film got round to telling us about it, and then it told us, in voiceover, and kept telling us, until the thing we had seen for ourselves was explained back to us. Brian Helgeland wrote her a commentary that describes the marriage we are already watching, and it turns a good, watchful performance into a guided tour. That is the recurring problem, and it is not hers. The bigger studio films have handed her archetypes to fill, *Pompeii* among them, and the smaller ones have sometimes asked for so much stillness that some reviewers found her opaque; we have not reviewed *Sleeping Beauty* and will not judge it here. But the complaint is the other face of what she is good at. An actor who works by withholding needs a director who trusts the withholding, and Helgeland did not, quite. Somebody should write her a part with no narrator, put her in a room with one other person, and leave the camera on her while she decides what to do about it. ## Biography Emily Jane Browning is an Australian actress. She was born on 7 December 1988 in Melbourne, Victoria. Browning made her screen debut in the television film *The Echo of Thunder* (1998) and appeared in Australian series including *Blue Heelers* (2000–2002). Her breakthrough came with the horror film *Ghost Ship* (2002). She received the Australian Film Institute International Award for Best Actress for playing Violet Baudelaire in *Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events* (2004). Browning is known for roles in *Sucker Punch* (2011), *The Host* (2013), *Pompeii* (2014) and as Frances Shea in *Legend* (2015). She starred as Laura Moon in the series *American Gods* (2017–2021). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Legend* (2015), Fi1m 57, as Frances Shea — [page](https://film.one/film/legend-2015.md) ## Complete filmography (35) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Fox* (2026), as Kori - *One More Shot* (2025), as Minnie Vernon - *Class of '07* (2023), series, as Zoe - *Monica* (2023), as Laura - *American Horror Stories* (2021), series, as Natessa - *Golden Exits* (2018), as Naomi - *American Gods* (2017), series, as Laura Moon - *Shangri-La Suite* (2016), as Karen Bird - *Legend* (2015), as Frances Shea — Fi1m 57, [page](https://film.one/film/legend-2015.md) - *The Affair* (2014), series, as Sierra - *God Help the Girl* (2014), as Eve - *Pompeii* (2014), as Cassia - *Plush* (2013), as Hayley - *Magic Magic* (2013), as Sarah - *Summer in February* (2013), as Florence Carter-Wood - *The Host* (2013), as Wanda - *Sleeping Beauty* (2011), as Lucy - *Sucker Punch* (2011), as Babydoll - *The Uninvited* (2009), as Anna - *Stranded* (2006), as Penny - *Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events* (2004), as Violet Baudelaire - *After the Deluge* (2003), series, as Maddy - *Ned Kelly* (2003), as Grace Kelly - *Darkness Falls* (2003), as Young Caitlin Greene - *Ghost Ship* (2002), as Katie Harwood - *The Man Who Sued God* (2001), as Rebecca Myers - *Blonde* (2001), series, as Fleece - *Something in the Air* (2000), series, as Alicia Simpson - *Thunderstone* (1999), series, as Clio - *High Flyers* (1999), series, as Phoebe - *The Echo of Thunder* (1998), as Opal Ritchie - *Halifax f.p.* (1994), series, as Christy O'Connor - *Blue Heelers* (1993), series, as Hayley Fulton - *Hallmark Hall of Fame* (1951), series, as Opal Ritchie - *Prison Break: Black Creek*, series, as Cassidy Collins ## Gallery - ![Emily Browning at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International.](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-19cdce12ef01.jpg) Emily Browning at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International. — Emily_Browning_2010_Comic_Con.jpg: rwoan derivative work: TriiipleThreat (talk), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Emily_Browning_2010_Comic-Con_Cropped.jpg/1280px-Emily_Browning_2010_Comic-Con_Cropped.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-867d388a7bff.jpg) Emily Browning — Emily_Browning_HIFF.jpg: Nick Stepowyj derivative work: PancakeMistake (talk), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Emily_Browning_HIFF_crop.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-7bbdba7a3e87.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-fa7140606375.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-fb669269cb13.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-9696ecd68290.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-a37ca91830ab.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB - ![Emily Browning](https://film.one/media/person/3838807/gallery-27a216f5e742.jpg) Emily Browning — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/emily-browning