---
name: "Melissa Barrera"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/melissa-barrera"
fi1m_id: "melissa-barrera"
imdb_id: "nm4574440"
tmdb_id: 1373659
wikidata_id: "Q20810462"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "4 July 1990"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 3
average_fi1m_score: 67
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 3
updated: "2026-09-19T15:50:12.836446+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."
---

# Melissa Barrera

## Identity

Melissa Barrera

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/melissa-barrera
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** melissa-barrera
- **IMDb ID:** nm4574440
- **TMDB ID:** 1373659
- **Wikidata ID:** Q20810462
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Barrera, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20810462, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4574440/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1373659

Actor. Born 4 July 1990 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 4 July 1990, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
- **Active:** 2022–present
- **Also known as:** Melissa Barrera Martínez
- **Frequently works with:** [Guy Busick](https://film.one/person/guy-busick.md), [James Vanderbilt](https://film.one/person/james-vanderbilt.md), [Matt Bettinelli-Olpin](https://film.one/person/matt-bettinelli-olpin.md), [Paul Neinstein](https://film.one/person/paul-neinstein.md), [Tyler Gillett](https://film.one/person/tyler-gillett.md), [Jasmin Savoy Brown](https://film.one/person/jasmin-savoy-brown.md), [Jenna Ortega](https://film.one/person/jenna-ortega.md), [Mason Gooding](https://film.one/person/mason-gooding.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 67, as actor, over 3 titles
- **Fi1m against the critics:** 67 to 67 across 3 titles
- **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 3 at 60–79, 0 under 60
- **Lead roles:** 3 of 3 acting credits billed first or second
- **Genres:** Horror 3, Thriller 2, Comedy 1, Crime 1, Mystery 1
- **Screen time:** 6 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $351m across 3 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Barrera, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20810462, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4574440/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1373659

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Scream*](https://film.one/film/scream-2022.md) (66), [*Scream VI*](https://film.one/film/scream-vi.md) (65)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Melissa Barrera

> Melissa Barrera plays fear as stillness: a held jaw, a level stare, a woman deciding not to move. It is a real skill and a narrow one, and it works best when the script gives her something to be still against.

Watch how little Melissa Barrera does when the mask appears. In *Scream VI* (2023) other people flinch, run or start talking; she goes quiet and her face shuts. Sam Carpenter knows what her father was and is frightened of what that makes her, and Barrera plays the fear as stillness. It is her most recognisable move, and across three horror films for the same two directors she has done it a great deal.

She did not start in horror. She came up through Mexican television, the talent show *La Academia* (2011) and the telenovelas that followed, then *Club de Cuervos* (2017), before *Vida* (2018) put her in front of an English-speaking audience as Lyn Hernandez. Her training was in musical theatre, and *In the Heights* (2021) is the one film that has asked for it, with Barrera's Vanessa singing rather than hiding. Then Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett cast her as Sam in *Scream* (2022), and horror is where she has stayed: *Scream VI*, then *Abigail* (2024) for the same directors, and *Your Monster* (2024), an indie horror-romance.

Stillness needs something to push against, and that is where the films have let her down more often than she has let them down. In *Scream*, Sam has a secret she cannot say aloud, and Barrera plays it as one clenched note that James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick's script never lets her vary; Jenna Ortega, in a hospital bed for most of the film, is the sister we worried about. By *Scream VI* she had grown into the part, and the two of them arguing in a New York kitchen is the best scene in either film without a knife in it, because Ortega's restlessness gives Barrera's quiet a shape. *Abigail* takes the shape away. Joey is handed a child and a drug habit she has beaten and asked to carry more and more of the film's feeling, and the steadiness goes flat as the weight goes on.

We noticed, in the last half hour of *Abigail*, that we were watching Alisha Weir's small monster and not the heroine, and we were sorry about it, because Barrera was doing precisely what she had been asked to do. The fault was the script's; the risk is that a run of scripts like it will fix her in the public mind as the woman who stands still while other people scream. She has said she wants "a character that feels fully human, that feels like somebody that I know". On the evidence of the *Scream VI* kitchen, she can play one when someone gives her another person to talk to.

Radio Silence have cast her three times and have not yet found the film that suits her. The next director to try should give her a room with no vampire in it, and perhaps a song.

## Biography

Melissa Barrera Martínez is a Mexican actress and singer. She was born on 4 July 1990 in Monterrey, Nuevo León. She studied musical theatre at New York University Tisch School of the Arts after attending the American School Foundation of Monterrey.

Barrera began her career in Mexican telenovelas, including lead roles in *Siempre tuya Acapulco* (2014) and *Tanto amor* (2015), and appeared in the Netflix series *Club de Cuervos* (2017). She gained wider recognition playing Lyn Hernandez in the Starz series *Vida* (2018–2020) and Vanessa in the film adaptation of *In the Heights* (2021).

She is known for portraying Sam Carpenter in the horror films *Scream* (2022) and *Scream VI* (2023), and Joey in *Abigail* (2024). Other credits include *Your Monster* (2024) and the series *Keep Breathing* (2022).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, ew.com.*

## On Fi1m (3)

- *Abigail* (2024), Fi1m 70, as Joey — [page](https://film.one/film/abigail.md)
- *Scream VI* (2023), Fi1m 65, as Sam Carpenter — [page](https://film.one/film/scream-vi.md)
- *Scream* (2022), Fi1m 66, as Sam Carpenter — [page](https://film.one/film/scream-2022.md)

## Complete filmography (28)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Traces of Home* (2026), Executive Producer
- *Life Support* (2026), Executive Producer
- *The Copenhagen Test* (2025), series, as Michelle
- *Your Monster* (2024), as Laura Franco
- *Abigail* (2024), as Joey — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/abigail.md)
- *Land of Gold* (2023), Thanks
- *Carmen* (2023), as Carmen
- *All the World Is Sleeping* (2023), as Chama
- *Scream VI* (2023), as Sam Carpenter — Fi1m 65, [page](https://film.one/film/scream-vi.md)
- *Bed Rest* (2023), as Julie Rivers · Producer
- *Keep Breathing* (2022), series, as Liv Rivera
- *Scream* (2022), as Sam Carpenter — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/film/scream-2022.md)
- *In the Heights* (2021), as Vanessa
- *Two Times You* (2018), as Daniela
- *Vida* (2018), series, as Lyn
- *Shake Off Your Sorrows* (2018), as Luisa
- *The Hotel* (2016), as Karina
- *A Beginner's Guide to the Presidency* (2016), as Brisa Carreiro
- *Club de Cuervos* (2015), series, as Isabel Cantú
- *Tanto Amor* (2015), series, as Mía. González
- *L for Leisure* (2015), as Kennedy
- *Siempre tuya Acapulco* (2014), series, as Olvido Pérez / Olvido Balmaceda Pérez
- *A Love To Remember* (2014), series, as Olvido Pérezová
- *La Mujer de Judas* (2012), series, as Zulema Sánchez
- *Black Tides*, as Rebecca Pierce
- *In the Cradle of Granite*, Actor
- *The Collaboration*, as Maya
- *Inhabit*, Actor

## Gallery

- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-67c1cd15a3b2.png) Melissa Barrera — LA LATA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Melissa_Barrera_in_2023.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Mexican actress Melissa Barrera in august 2013.](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-34c1ed1a7650.jpg) Mexican actress Melissa Barrera in august 2013. — Prensaescenario, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Actriz_mexicana_Melissa_Barrera_en_2013.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Barrera in 2024](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-c7ca5ef97336.png) Barrera in 2024 — Our Movie Guide, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Barrera_in_2024.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Melissa y Sebastian en el Concierto Exa Puebla 2013 (2018)](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-fa08bf1dc570.jpg) Melissa y Sebastian en el Concierto Exa Puebla 2013 (2018) — Canal Puebla, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Melissa_Barrera_2013.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-14576d9f0f10.jpg) Melissa Barrera — Image via TMDB
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-7a1fe5273c1a.jpg) Melissa Barrera — Image via TMDB
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-df25c35fce04.jpg) Melissa Barrera — Image via TMDB
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-c1e467d6ed71.jpg) Melissa Barrera — Image via TMDB
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-5be17358d40f.jpg) Melissa Barrera — Image via TMDB
- ![Melissa Barrera](https://film.one/media/person/11655/gallery-003175bbaf5c.jpg) Melissa Barrera — 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/melissa-barrera