Lauren Cohan

Cohan was born to an American father and a British mother, and has Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian ancestry. Some sources give Cohan's birthplace as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but Cohan has stated in interviews that she was born in New Jersey.

During her childhood, Cohan lived in Cherry Hill, New Jersey—and, for one year, Georgia—before moving to the United Kingdom at age 13. The family settled in Surrey. When Cohan's mother remarried, she took her new husband's surname, Cohan, and converted to Judaism. Cohan also converted to her stepfather's religion at age five, and had a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. She has five younger siblings, including a stepsister.

Cohan graduated from the University of Winchester with a BA degree in drama and English literature, before touring with a theatre company she had co-founded at the university. Cohan then split her time and work between London and Los Angeles, working on several films as well as some non-commercial projects.

Cohan at a True Blood party in 2013

Film

After her film debut Casanova as Sister Beatrice, she starred in the sequel to Van Wilder, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj as Charlotte Higginson in 2006. Her next role was in the 2008 film Float. In February 2010, she was cast in Death Race 2: Frankenstein Lives, with Sean Bean and Danny Trejo and also supernatural-horror The Boy releasing in 2016 where Lauren plays the main character Greta.

Television

Cohan was cast in season three of Supernatural as Bela Talbot, a thief who procures valuable supernatural objects and sells them to very rich, very powerful people in the supernatural world. The character appeared in six episodes of the series, her last in the penultimate episode of season three.

Cohan played the recurring character Rose, a 560-year-old vampire, in The Vampire Diaries. In 2011, she joined the television series Chuck in a recurring role playing Vivian McArthur Volkoff, a "charming, sophisticated socialite" from the United Kingdom, and the daughter of primary villain, Alexei Volkoff. She also guest starred on shows such as Modern Family, CSI: NY, Cold Case, Life, Archer, and The Bold and the Beautiful.

Cohan starred in a pilot for The CW called Heavenly in which she played the lead character, an attorney who teams up with an angel; however, it was not picked up as a series.

In 2011, Cohan was cast in her most notable role as Maggie Greene on The Walking Dead, an AMC horror drama series based on the comic book series of the same name. She first appeared in the second season as a recurring character, but she was among the starring roles at the start of the third season. The drama is currently the highest rated series in cable television history.

Cohan at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2014

Cohan at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2016

Film

Television

Video games