Alison Brie: My Life in 10 Roles
From ‘Community’ to her current horror flick, ‘Together,’ the actress looks back on her career and discusses working with her husband, Dave Franco

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Early in her acting career, Alison Brie had the remarkable good fortune of landing two major jobs at the same time: NBC’s cult-hit sitcom Community and AMC’s Sixties-set dramatic masterpiece Mad Men. She remembers a few instances where she’d have to work double duty, which involved driving to different Los Angeles soundstages and major wardrobe adjustments. “It was like my version of code switching,” the actress, 42, tells Rolling Stone.
As the ambitious, overachieving Annie Edison on Community, Brie wore comfortable sweaters and skirts. But as housewife Trudy Campbell on Mad Men, every aspect of her costume was period appropriate — even the undergarments. “With girdles and pointy bras, everything was tailored within an inch of our life,” she says. “It was like, ‘Oh, boy, here we go. Don’t have too big of a lunch. Don’t drink too much water.’” But the hectic days were worth it. “I was so young, those were two of my first jobs,” Brie says. “I would have taken any job. Those were the most exciting days of my young life. Truly, I was like, ‘I’m a working actor! I’m doing it!”
Brie takes a similar stance today when asked to reflect on 10 special roles across her career, from those beloved television shows to her role as the villainous Madison in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s debut film Promising Young Woman to the new horror film Together, which she stars in with her husband, Dave Franco. “I am realizing how often I am chasing opportunities to be free, to pursue things that scare me and enable me to take risks,“ she says. “The most adventurous that I am as a person is in my work, and I’m proud of that.”
Brie’s career, which began over two decades ago, is packed with wide-ranging roles that prove she can do it all. An irritating publicist who gets brutally murdered by a serial killer in a parking garage? Check. A sex addict incapable of monogamy? Done. A struggling actress turned wrestler in the 1980s? Child’s play. There was that one role she didn’t in the early days of her career — a small part in a Marvel movie she’d like to go unnamed — but she clearly didn’t need it. “That certainly was a heartbreaker,” she says. “But it actually all worked out for the best. When I look at my career trajectory since that audition, I’m really happy with the way things worked out.”
From Rolling Stone US