Anna Chlumsky just might be one of the child stars who made the most intriguing transition to adult roles. The actress burst onto the scene at 11 when she starred in the coming-of-age tearjerker My Girl. The 1991 film was a major hit, and made Chlumsky just about as popular as her already-famous costar Macauley Culkin. She then appeared in the 1994 sequel and movies like Trading Mom (1994), Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (1995), and a couple of TV movies and episodes, before taking an extended break from the entertainment industry from 1998 to 2005.
Chlumsky came back in a big way in 2012, when she was cast in the political comedy Veep as the Vice President’s intense Chief of Staff, and she’s continued to act since the show ended in 2019. Here’s a look at her unique journey from precocious young movie star to hilarious TV fixture.
How Anna Chlumsky became a star—and then left Hollywood
Anna Chlumsky was working before she hit her first birthday, and had her first job posing in a print ad when she was just 10 months old. At 2, she was in her first commercial. Her role in My Girl gave her a big break, but she was already a pro, and because of her tomboy screen presence and the film’s emotional narrative, she won over a devoted fanbase that felt they shared a special connection with her.
Like most child stars, Chlumsky didn’t have an easy time with being so widely recognized at such a young age, and while she didn’t fight the personal demons that so many young actors face, she said, “I was lucky because I didn’t have any other huge traumas at the time. I’m the baseline of [child stardom] going relatively well. Yet it was only as an adult that I discovered any sense of reliability or security. When I was a child those did not exist, because I was for sale.”
The actress still often gets asked about My Girl, and has admitted that she gets sick of talking about it, likening it to “talking about that recital you did when you were 10.”
By 1998, when she was 18, Chlumsky was burned out by acting and wanted to live a more low-key life. She stepped away from Hollywood to go to college at the University of Chicago with a degree in International Studies and met her now-husband, Shaun So. When she graduated, she began to work in publishing, taking jobs as a fact-checker and editorial assistant.
Chlumsky saw this break from fame as vital to her well-being, saying, “The years away definitely gave me perspective. Going to college was my first act of standing up for myself and asking myself what I wanted, making my own decisions. You’ve got to start somewhere, if you didn’t get to start at the optimal age.”
Anna Chlumsky’s comeback
Chlumsky ultimately grew conflicted about whether she wanted to ever return to acting, and even went to a fortune teller who told her she should keep doing it. After much soul-searching, she decided to ease back in with acting lessons, and had her first part in seven years in the 2005 short film Wait. She then acted in a few independent films, including In the Loop (2009), and the director, Armando Iannucci, went on to create Veep and cast Chlumsky in the show, giving her a major comeback.
Chlumsky’s profanity-spewing Veep character couldn’t have been more different from her My Girl sweetheart, and she surprised and delighted viewers in the role. The actress said the time people started recognizing her on the street for Veep rather than My Girl marked a turning point in her career, and called the show “life-changing.”
While on Veep, Chlumsky also appeared in shows like Hannibal and Halt and Catch Fire.
Anna Chlumsky’s post-Veep career
Since Veep ended, Chlumsky has continued to work steadily, and in 2022, she starred as a journalist covering the real-life scammer Anna Delvey in the ripped-from-the-headlines Netflix miniseries Inventing Anna. That same year, she acted in the slasher movie They/Them, and from 2021 to 2023, she voiced a character in the Rugrats reboot. Her most recent appearance was in an episode of Evil this year, and she’ll next be seen in the upcoming action-comedy Bride Hard.
Dreaming beyond acting
The star has ambitions to move behind the camera one day, saying, “There’s plenty of people I want to work with. I’ve got some wild aspirations. I’ve got this nagging dream to direct opera someday, or there’s documentaries that I want to exist in the world that I don’t think anybody else will make. I’m going to have to, someday, in the latter half of my life, figure out how to do that.”
Being a child star wasn’t easy for Chlumsky, and she grappled with the existential perils of young fame for a long time, but at the end of the day, she said, “I love acting. I miss it when I don’t do it . . . I’m at an interesting place where, like, all of those roles that made me want to act when I was in my early twenties—I’m past them now. It’s kind of a fun moment in my life where I’m discovering all of the roles I’m going to be right for now. That’s different. It’s cool, and it’s different. Ingenues are done.” We look forward to many more non-ingenue roles in the future.
