At age 22, Hollywood actress Kaitlyn Dever's star is on the rise, and 2019 has been nothing but good to her. Just this year alone, Dever has starred in a number of major productions on the big screen, including the sleeper film Them That Follow (alongside Oscar-winner Olivia Coleman!) and hilarious coming-of-age comedy Booksmart. Most recently, Dever starred in the Netflix original Unbelievable, a true-crime limited series adapted from a 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning article detailing a sexual assault police investigation gone wrong.
The buzz around Dever and her talents is growing as each day, and it's only natural that people start to wonder just what she's about. Ahead, important things you need to know about the actress before she officially blows up in Hollywood.
She has an impressive filmography.
Since getting her first gig in a Barbie commercial (on her very first audition nonetheless), Dever has had a steady stream of acting jobs. Aside from some minor roles in projects like like Bad Teacher, J. Edgar, and The Mentalist, Dever got her big break when she landed the part of Eve Baxter on ABC's family sitcom Last Man Standing. Other notable works in Dever's repertoire include the crime drama Detroit and the biographical drama Beautiful Boy with Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell.
The 22-year-old has more projects in the pipeline; she's slated to star in the recently greenlit FX Networks pilot for Platform, an anthology series that "uses the boldest issues of our times as a jumping-off point to tell singular, character-driven stories about the world we live in today." Dever will be joined by Lucas Hedges, Jon Bernthal, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. in the BJ Novak-produced pilot.
She has a special connection with Toni Collette.
Working with the iconic actress on the set of Unbelievable was serendipitous for Dever—after all, Collette is technically responsible for sparking her interest in acting to begin with. "The first scary movie my parents let me watch was The Sixth Sense. When I saw [Collette] in that film, I thought, Oh my god this is a real performance,” Kaitlyn told Teen Vogue. “It was the first honest performance I had seen and it just blew me away and I'm like that is what I want to do. That's exactly what I want to do.”
She and Booksmart co-star Beanie Feldstein are best friends IRL
In Booksmart, Dever and Feldstein play BFFs who have been attached at the hip since they were kids. To make sure that they had the necessary offscreen connection to play onscreen best friends, the actresses decided to move in together, sharing a Sunset Boulevard high-rise while filming the movie.
Their time as roommates brought the former strangers closer than ever, and the camaraderie depicted in Booksmart is 100 percent authentic. "They really do know each other completely,” mused Olivia Wilde of Dever and Feldstein. “I remember giving them a direction where I told them to notice how when you’re with your best friend, you rarely look at one another. You walk side by side and have a sense of connectivity without even having to look at each other, unless you’re having a very intense conversation. And they were like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Their level of intimacy is just deeper than that.”
She doesn't just act—she sings, too!
OG fans of Dever might remember being impressed by her pipes in numerous episodes of Last Man Standing—remember the Love Arrow music video? The actress has been putting her melodious voice to use as one-half of the band Beulahbelle, a group she formed with her sister Mady. Dever strums the guitar and provides the lead vocals, and Mady provides a soul-stirring harmony while playing the keyboard.
Beulahbelle has caught the attention of many big names in the industry since its debut; the sister duo was approached by director Jason Reitman to write a song for the Charlize Theron-led film Tully in 2018, and thus the dreamy sounds of "Let You Go" were born. They also recorded a cover of Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice" for the Tully soundtrack.
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