Malina Weissman's trade is composure: the sensible child among fools, hair tied back, already working on the way out. Over 25 episodes of A Series of Unfortunate Events it reads as poise and as not much underneath, and everything since is about which.
Fi1m perspective
Violet Baudelaire ties her hair back when she is about to invent something, and in A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017) Malina Weissman does it in episode after episode, each time a new guardian has failed her, which is every time. It is a good piece of business, small and repeatable, and it tells you what the performance is: a girl keeping herself still so that she can think while the adults cannot. She plays Violet from child to near-adult across three seasons and the stillness never wavers. That is the strength, and it is also the complaint.
She came to acting from modelling, signed at eight in New York, and her first screen parts were other people's childhoods: young April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), young Kara Zor-El in Supergirl (2015). It is a particular apprenticeship. You are cast to resemble a star and to stay out of her way, and you learn to be clear and unobtrusive. Nine Lives (2016) gave her a first proper film part, in a film that was received poorly, and then Barry Sonnenfeld's adaptation of the books gave her 25 episodes as the eldest Baudelaire, with Louis Hynes as Klaus and Neil Patrick Harris as the man in the eyebrows.
Our review called the children the problem the series never solved, and that still holds. Weissman and Hynes play Violet and Klaus as the only reasonable people in any room, and over 25 episodes the calm starts to look like the whole act. She said at the time, "I didn't want to put a twist on her", and she meant it: what she gives is a role model, upright and unsurprised, which is admirable in a person and limiting in a performance. We were bored by the fourth episode, and cross about it, because Patrick Warburton's narration and the sets deserved a story that moved, and because we could see Weissman being careful in scenes where we wanted her to be frightened. The structure did not help her; the editors, Stuart Bass, Steve Welch and Skip Macdonald, could not cut what the books insisted on keeping. But Presley Smith, a baby, was the most natural performer of the three, and that is not a sentence anyone wants written about their breakthrough.
Since the series ended she has gone looking for people with more edge. Grace in the horror-comedy Ick (2024) is, by her own account, sardonic and unimpressed by anything, and Briar Roberts in Coven Academy (2026), her first lead since Violet, is a guarded Brooklyn teenager with telekinesis and a sharp tongue. We have not reviewed either, so we will not pretend to know whether the edge is new or whether it is the old composure with a sneer attached. It is the right thing to be asking of her. Sarcasm is calm with an opinion, and an opinion was the one thing Violet was never allowed. The part worth waiting for is the one that makes her lose her temper.
Biography
Malina Weissman is an American actress and model. Born in New York City on 12 March 2003, she began her career as a model at the age of eight and has worked with brands including Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.
She is known for playing Violet Baudelaire in the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019). Earlier roles include young April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), young Kara Zor-El in Supergirl (2015–2017) and Rebecca Brand in Nine Lives (2016). In 2026 she stars as Briar Roberts in the series Coven Academy.
Weissman graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in May 2025. Her older sister is the indie pop artist Ayla D'Lyla.
