Cailee Spaeny (born 24th July 1997 in Springfield, Missouri) is an American actress.
She's perhaps best known for her starring roles in Pacific Rim: Uprising as Amara Namani and in Priscilla as Priscilla Presley (the latter of which earned her a Volpi Cup for Best Actress), and for her supporting role as Rose in Bad Times at the El Royale.
Filmography includes:
- Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) as Amara Namani
- Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) as Rose Summerspring
- On the Basis of Sex (2018) as Jane Ginsburg
- Vice (2018) as young Lynne Cheney
- Devs (2020) as Lyndon
- The Craft: Legacy (2020) as Lilith "Lily" Schechner
- Mare of Easttown (2021) as Erin McMenamin
- How It Ends (2021) as Little Liza
- The First Lady (2022) as Anna Roosevelt
- Priscilla (2023) as Priscilla Presley
- Civil War (2024) as Jessie Cullen
- Alien: Romulus (2024) as Rain Carradine
Tropes associated with the creator and her works:
- Cross-Cast Role: Lyndon in Devs is a male character; according to Word of God Spaeny was cast in the role to make Lyndon appear more youthful.
- Dawson Casting:
- A slightly downplayed example with Pacific Rim: Uprising; she was 19 years old during filming, portraying 15 year old Amara.
- She was 22 years old when she played Lily in The Craft: Legacy, who is a high schooler.
- She was cast as Priscilla Presley in a biopic and plays the character from the ages of 15 to 27; Spaeny was 25 during filming.
- Friendship on the Set: In Mare of Easttown, Spaeny and Ruby Cruz portray best friends and subsequently became good friends in real life.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Due to Spaeny being 5'1", this applies to some roles where her characters are paired with much taller men.
- In The Craft: Legacy, Lily's love interest, the jock Timmy, is played Nicholas Galitzine, who at six feet is nearly a foot taller.
- In Priscilla, Jacob Elordi plays Priscilla's long-term partner and eventual husband Elvis; at 6'5", Elordi is over a foot taller than Spaeny. In this case, their height difference is also used as a visual representation of the power imbalance between the couple.
- Older Than They Look: In her twenties she could pass for much younger with no issue and so she was often cast as teenagers. Sofia Coppola even stated this was a factor in her casting Spaeny in the title role of biopic Priscilla:"The character goes from the age of 15 to 27 over the course of the film, so she had to be able to act and age across a big span of time. It was really important for me to have the same actress playing Priscilla at those different stages of her life, and I think Cailee can pull it off. She’s such a strong actress, and she also looks very young."
- This trope also comes into play in Civil War; though Jessie is twenty-three, only a year younger than Spaeny was during filming, the fact that she looks much younger helps make the Trauma Conga Line she goes through be even more affecting and helps sell the fact that her new friends become very protective of her within a couple days after meeting her.
- Production Posse:
- She's starred in two films written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones; The Craft: Legacy and How It Ends (in the latter Spaeny portrays a younger version of Lister-Jones' character).
- She's been in two projects created by Alex Garland; the series Devs and the movie Civil War. Garland specifically wrote Spaeny's role in Civil War with her in mind because she impressed him so much on Devs that he wanted to work with her again.
- What Could Have Been: She was originally cast as Kit in Willow (2022), but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts, being replaced by Ruby Cruz (whom she had appeared with in Mare of Easttown).
