Allison Williams

Allison Howell Williams (born April 13, 1988) is an American actress, who played Marnie Michaels on the HBO comedy-drama series Girls and received critical acclaim for her performance in the 2017 horror film Get Out.

Williams was born and raised in New Canaan, Connecticut, the daughter of former NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams and TV producer Jane Gillan Stoddard. She has a brother, Doug, three years her junior. She attended New Canaan Country School and Greenwich Academy.

Williams attended Yale University, where she was a member of Morse College and St. Elmo secret society. At Yale, Williams was also a member of the improv comedy troupe Just Add Water for four years and acted in the YouTube series College Musical. The project featured Sam Tsui and was directed by Kurt Hugo Schneider, both of whom attended Yale. She graduated with a degree in English in 2010.

In 2010, Williams performed a mashup of "Nature Boy" set to RJD2's "A Beautiful Mine", the theme song for the television series Mad Men. The YouTube video of the performance received widespread praise on the Internet, and convinced Judd Apatow that she should be given a part in the HBO series Girls. She was cast shortly after and credited her experience at Just Add Water for passing the audition. Girls premiered on April 15, 2012.

Williams wrote a series of Funny or Die sketches, in which she starred as newlywed Kate Middleton, with English actor and model Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Williams appeared as Danielle in an episode of the third season of The League titled "The Guest Bong".

Williams has appeared as a recurring character, Cheryl, in the CollegeHumor series Jake and Amir.

On December 4, 2014 she starred in the title role on NBC's live television presentation of the musical Peter Pan Live!, opposite Christopher Walken as Captain Hook. In November 2016, Williams appeared in Past Forward, a short film collaboration between David O. Russell and Prada.

In 2017, Williams starred in the hit horror film Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, who became convinced she was right for the role of Rose after seeing her performance in Peter Pan Live! In the same year, Williams was cast in the role of Charlotte on the Netflix horror film, The Perfection. The film was released on May 24, 2019.

In 2018, Williams was cast in a recurring role as Kit Snicket throughout the second and third seasons of the Netflix comedy drama series A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Williams began dating Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of CollegeHumor, in 2011. They became engaged in 2014 and married on September 19, 2015 in a private ceremony in Saratoga, Wyoming. Tom Hanks officiated the ceremony. She and her husband lived in Chelsea, New York. On June 27, 2019, they issued a joint statement that they will be splitting up.

Advocacy

Williams is an ambassador for Horizons National. She led the 2016 "10 Days of Giving" campaign to raise awareness and funds for the organization's educational goals and is expected to revisit this role in 2017. She has also done work with Product Red to fund HIV/AIDS programs in Africa, and is currently involved with the Transformational Prison Project as an advocate for criminal justice reform. Williams recently talked about her political views, advocacy, millennial activism, and women in Hollywood on the Politico podcast, Women Rule.