Tara Lynne Barr

Actress Tara Lynne Barr earned critical praise for playing complicated, sometimes dangerous young women in projects ranging from "God Bless America" (2011) to "Aquarius" (NBC, 2015-16) and "Casual" (Hulu, 2015-). Born in Orange County, California, she was a distant relative of the Oscar-winning actor Gig Young, and the daughter of Southern California Edison Company employees who provided her with an introduction to acting through after-school programs. Her sister's involvement with the with the Boys and Girls Clubs' stage program inspired her to try her hand at performing, and she soon graduated from children's theater to bit roles on television and in short films. Barr flirted briefly with Disney television series like "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" (Disney Channel, 2005-2008), but she decided to pursue more substantive work if she were to become a professional actor. Shortly before graduating from high school, she was cast in writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait's coal-black comedy "God Bless America" (2011), playing a disillusioned high school student who joins a burnt-out insurance salesman (Joel Murray) on a kill spree that targets rude individuals. The role largely set the tone for Barr's characters that followed: in the short "Joan's Day Out" (2013), she played a jailed teenager whose grandmother (Sally Kellerman) breaks out of her nursing home to rescue her, while in "Dawn" (2014), a Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated short directed by actress Rose McGowan, she played a teenager who finds relief from her oppressive family in a forbidden romance. "Aquarius," she played a fictionalized member of the Manson Family based on Patricia Krenwinkel, one of the real-life Tate-LaBianca killers. That same year, she was cast on the comedy-drama series "Casual" as the daughter of a newly divorced mother (Michaela Watkins) who moves in with her unmarried brother (Tommy Dewey).