Eleanor Madeleine "Ella" Wright (born December 31, 1981), is an American actress and film producer. After studying acting at the Juilliard School, she won a Screen Actors Guild award and received a Golden Globe nomination for her breakout role as Kate Austen on the ABC series Lost (2004-10). She is also best known for her roles as Hope Van Dyne in Ant-Man and the extended Marvel Cinematic Universe, Commander Lewis in The Martian (2015), and Serena Joy Waterford in Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale (2017).

In 2016, Wright portrayed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the biographical drama Jackie. She was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and won the BFCA Critics Choice Award for Best Actress.

Wright is the daughter of Academy Award-winning director John Wright and actress Diana Wright.

EARLY LIFE & EDUCATION
Wright was born and raised in Beverly Hills, California. She is the second child and oldest daughter of director John Wright and his second wife, actress Diana Wright. Her siblings include (Brother), actresses Rebekah and Mallory, and actor Wesley, as well as half-siblings Junior and (Sister) from her father's first marriage.

Wright graduated from the Harvard-Westlake School, where she participated in student government and the drama program. She auditioned for and was accepted to the Juilliard School to study acting, and she received her BFA in 2004 (in Group 33).

LOST AND EARLY ROLES
Shortly before graduating from Juilliard, Wright submitted an audition tape for the pilot of Lost. Around 75 women auditioned for the part of Kate Austen. Writer and co-creator Damon Lindelof said that he and executive producer and co-creator J. J. Abrams "were fast-forwarding through a tape, and he saw [Wright] and said, 'That's the girl.'"

Lost ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2010. It was one of the top shows on ABC's primetime schedule during its run, won a Golden Globe and 11 Primetime Emmy Awards including best drama in 2005, and was ranked the top-rated TV show of the decade by IMDb. Wright appeared in 108 of the show's 121 episodes, and her character, Kate Austen, was the show's female lead. Entertainment Weekly voted Wright one of its "Breakout Stars of 2004." In 2006, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Lead Actress-Drama. Robert Bianco of USA Today praised Wright's performance in the episode "Eggtown", saying that it was almost worthy of a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2007, Wright's portrayal was voted #1 Sexiest Woman on Television by TV Guide and made FHM's Top Sexiest. Ella was voted one of People Magazine's '50 Most Beautiful People'.

Wright furthered her profile in 2008, first with Easy Virtue, an adaptation of the play by Noël Coward. The film premiered in September 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Critics praised Wright for her performance, with Todd McCarthy of Variety saying Wright "more than kept up" with veterans Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth and praising her "sparkling" performance. The Hollywood Reporter described her performance as "an irresistible force of nature – a kind, witty, supremely intelligent and beautiful woman who ... is capable of rejoinders that thoroughly undercut her opponent's withering criticism." Wright also performed two songs on the film's soundtrack, "Mad About the Boy" and "When the Going Gets Tough".

Also in 2008, Wright appeared in the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker. She and the rest of the cast won the Gotham Award for Best Ensemble Cast and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble in 2009.

TRANSITION TO FILM ROLES
Wright's first film to premiere after Lost went off the air came in 2010, when she starred opposite actor-director Ben Affleck in The Town.

In 2011, she appeared as Bailey Tallet in Real Steel opposite Hugh Jackman. Director Shawn Levy said: "She's magnificent to look at, she's soulful, and she's sexy. I needed someone who you believed had grown up in a man's world. Bailey needed to have a strength and a toughness that was not at the expense of her being womanly."

In the same year, she played the wife of Michael Shannon's character in Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter. The drama tells the story of a troubled father who tries to protect his family from an impending storm. It was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and the critic Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph took note of how much Wright's supporting part aided the narrative. She received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female for the film.

Her first true leading film role came in 2012 when she was cast as the headstrong Martian princess Dejah Thoris in John Carter. The film received mixed-to-negative reviews and lost money, and a planned sequel was scrapped. Later in 2012 she starred in Lawless, directed by John Hillcoat, was based on Matt Bondurant's prohibition era novel The Wettest County in the World. The film premiered at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Wright played a dancer from Chicago who becomes embroiled in a conflict between three bootlegging brothers (played by Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke). The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with Richard Corliss finding Wright to be filled with "poised, seductive gravity".

In 2013, Wright starred in the thriller film The Truth About Emanuel, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2013. The film was produced by her sister, actress Rebekah Wright. That year she also played Suzy Miller in the biographical drama Rush, about James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

HIGHER PROFILE & CRITICAL SUCCESS
Wright appeared in three films in 2014. She played Molly in the film Chef, alongside Jon Favreau, Robert Downey, Jr. and Sofía Vergara, which premiered on March 7, 2014 at South by Southwest and was subsequently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. She appeared as Margo "Go" Dunne in thriller film Gone Girl, based on the 2012 novel of same name and directed by David Fincher. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, Gone Girl shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched."

Wright's final release of 2014 was the J. C. Chandor-directed crime drama A Most Violent Year. Set in New York City in 1981, the year in which the city had the highest crime rate, the film tells the story of a small heating oil company owner (played by Oscar Isaac) and his ruthless wife (Wright). In preparation, Wright researched the period and worked with a coach to develop a Brooklyn accent. She collaborated with costume designer Kasia Walicka-Maimone to work on the character's wardrobe, and reached out to Armani for clothing of the period. The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle believed Wright to be "the embodiment of a nouveau riche New York woman of the era", and Mark Kermode of The Guardian found Wright to be "terrific as the Lady Macbeth power behind the throne". She received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for the film.

In 2015, Wright played Hope van Dyne in the superhero film Ant-Man. In October of the same year, it was announced that Wright would reprise her role in the sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Marvel's first movie to feature a female hero in the title. She also portrayed Chrisann Brennan in Steve Jobs. Her biggest film of that year was Ridley Scott's The Martian, in which Wright took on the part of a space mission commander. Starring Matt Damon as a botanist who is stranded on Mars, the film was based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name. Wright met with astronauts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johnson Space Center, and based her role on Tracy Caldwell Dyson. She spent time with Dyson in Houston and said, "My character is dealing with the guilt of leaving a crew member behind, but she's still responsible for the lives of five other crewmates. I tried to play her as Tracy would have been in those moments."

Wright started 2016 with the fantasy film The Huntsman: Winter's War, co-starring Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt. The film served as both a sequel and a prequel to the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman. She was drawn to the idea of playing a female warrior whose abilities were on par with the male lead, but the film generated negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office.

Also in 2016, Wright played the title role in director Pablo Larrain's Jackie, a biographical drama about 1960s American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, following the death of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. Wright's performance was widely praised, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Wright began 2017 as the titular character in the drama The Zookeeper's Wife, an adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name from the director Niki Caro. Wright co-starred with Johan Heldenbergh as the real-life Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński who saved many human and animal lives during World War II. Wright also served as executive producer. The film received mixed reviews, although Stephen Holden took note of how Wright's "watchful, layered performance" empowered the film. In May, she will perform the duties of a jury member at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

As of April 2017, Wright stars as Serena Joy in the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's classic novel The Handmaid's Tale. She also has four upcoming projects. She will feature alongside Christian Bale in Scott Cooper's upcoming period drama Hostiles, and in the part of Molly Bloom, a disgruntled skier who ran a high-profile gambling operation, in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game. She is also set to reprise her role of Hope Van Dyne in both Ant-Man and the Wasp and the untitled fourth Avengers film set for release in 2019.

PERSONAL LIFE & OFF-SCREEN WORK
Wright lived in Kailua, Hawai'i, for the duration of the filming of Lost. She now resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Wright was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States Presidential Election. She participated in the 2017 Women's March on Washington and has publicly stated she is a feminist.