Rowan Blanchard
Rowan Blanchard
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Rowan Blanchard

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Rowan Blanchard

Rowan Blanchard (born October 14, 2001) is an American actress. She began acting as a child and starred in the action film Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011). She gained wide recognition for playing Riley Matthews on the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World (2014–2017), which earned her nominations at the Kids' Choice, Teen Choice, and Young Artist Awards. She then starred in the TNT/AMC series Snowpiercer (2020–2024) and the Hulu coming-of-age film Crush (2022).

Blanchard was born on October 14, 2001, in Los Angeles, California, to Elizabeth and Mark Blanchard-Boulbol, who are yoga instructors. Her great-grandfather was Syrian; and her great-grandmother was Armenian. Her paternal great-grandparents met in Aleppo, present-day Syria. She was named after a character in Anne Rice's The Witching Hour. Rowan has two younger siblings, Carmen and Shane.

Blanchard began acting in 2006 at the age of five, first being cast as Mona's daughter in The Back-up Plan and was in the main cast of the Disney Junior Original Series Dance-a-Lot Robot as Caitlin. In 2011, she was cast as Rebecca Wilson in Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, and as Raquel Pacheco in Little in Common. The former earned her a Young Artist Award nomination.

In 2013, Blanchard was cast in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World, a sequel to Boy Meets World, as Riley Matthews, the daughter of Boy Meets World characters Cory Matthews and Topanga Lawrence. She also sings the title song with co-star Sabrina Carpenter, among other songs for the network. The series premiered in 2014, and ran for three seasons until 2017. Although Brian Howry of Variety gave the series a mixed review, he said that Blanchard was an "appealing lead". Max Nicholson of IGN agreed, writing that she had "the same go-getter spunk of predecessor Ben Savage, but she also nails the wide-eyed innocence that made Cory such a lovable lead in the original." He also called the "Girl Meets Rileytown" episode one of her "best performances yet, proving her dynamic range as actress once again." For Girl Meets World, she received nominations at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards, and Young Artist Awards. Also for Disney, she played Cleo in the 2015 Disney Channel Original Movie Invisible Sister.

From 2017 to 2018, Blanchard had a recurring role as Jackie Geary on the ABC series The Goldbergs. In 2016, she was cast in the minor role of Veronica Kiley in Ava DuVernay's film A Wrinkle in Time, an adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same name. Her performance was partially improvised, and Blanchard said "I've never had so much freedom and so much trust from a director ever." It was released in 2018 to mixed reviews.

In March 2019, Blanchard was cast as Alexandra Cavill in TNT/AMC's Snowpiercer, a futuristic thriller series based on the 2013 South Korean-Czech film of the same name. The series premiered in 2020, and Blanchard was promoted to the main cast from the second season onwards. She co-stars with Jennifer Connelly, whom Blanchard told TV Insider that "I feel really, really grateful that the show provided me opportunity to work with [her] because she's been acting since she was a child and I’ve been acting since I was a child." Snowpiercer ran for four seasons with mixed to positive reviews, concluding in 2024.

It was announced in 2021 that Blanchard would co-star with Auli'i Cravalho in the Hulu movie Crush, which was released in April 2022 and became the third most streamed film of its release week. It received generally positive reviews from critics, many of whom praised Blanchard's performance. Tomris Laffly of Variety called her "instantly likeable", and Christy Lemire for RogerEbert.com wrote that both Blanchard and Cravalho "assert themselves confidently with more mature material while still bringing all that well-honed comic timing".

In 2023, Blanchard guest starred on the comedy-drama series Poker Face as Lily Albern. In 2025, she was cast as pampered teen Shunammite, a series regular role, in the Hulu dystopian drama series The Testaments, a sequel series to The Handmaid's Tale.

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