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Latest News: Cailee Spaeny Discusses Her New Movie, Alien: Romulus
As space traveler Rain Carradine, Cailee Spaeny didn’t battle any real creatures on the set of her upcoming movie Alien: Romulus, but the fear she experienced was genuine. The 25-year-old actor recently discussed one of the most unsettling scenes from the horror flick, which marks the sixth sequel in the series made popular by Sigourney Weaver and its slimy extraterrestrials.
“I remember we did one specific take of a scene where I’m with the Xenomorph and [director Fede Álvarez] kept it rolling for about… oh God, it felt like half an hour, but it was probably only 10 minutes,” Spaeny told Entertainment Weekly. “It was just pure terror for 10 minutes straight, with the Xenomorph right there. Fede was great at throwing in little surprises like that and catching us actors off guard.”
Alien: Romulus arrives in theaters on August 16.
Who Is Cailee Spaeny?
Cailee Spaeny has emerged as one of Hollywood’s top young female actors with her Golden Globe–nominated portrayal of Priscilla Presley in the 2023 biopic Priscilla as well as her role in the 2024 action thriller Civil War. Raised in Missouri, she dropped out of school at age 13 to pursue an acting career. After performing primarily at her local theater and a nearby theme park, Spaeny landed her debut movie role in 2018’s Pacific Rim: Uprising. She stars in the upcoming movie Alien: Romulus.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Cailee Spaeny
BORN: July 24, 1998
BIRTHPLACE: Knoxville, Tennessee
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
Early Life
Cailee Spaeny was born on July 24, 1998, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to parents Mark and Reja Spaeny. She is the seventh of nine siblings.
Raised in Springfield, Missouri, she had what she called a “black and white” upbringing—everyone in Spaeny’s deeply religious family was expected to progress through school to employment and, eventually, marriage. This trajectory didn’t appeal to young Cailee, who struggled to maintain her grades in school.
Spaeny began to seek refuge through performing. “I knew at such a young age that I was going to commit my life to something else,” she told Flaunt.com. “I don’t know where that came from. It felt like there was some higher power or being that touched me and said, ‘This is what you’re going to do.’”
At age 11, Cailee began taking guitar and piano lessons. She soon started a rock cover band called NRG with friends. They performed songs by Pink Floyd and Joan Jett at birthday parties and nearby festivals.
Clearly not shy of the stage, Spaeny took dance and vocal lessons through the local Springfield Little Theater and participated in a variety of plays. At 13, she also began performing at Silver Dollar City, an 1880s-themed amusem*nt park in Branson, Missouri. Her career aspirations cemented, Spaeny refused to keep up with her homeschooling and committed to becoming a professional actor around this time.
Movies: Priscilla, Civil War, and More
As many hopeful actors do, Spaeny set her sights on Hollywood. She began making regular 25-hour road trips from Springfield to California with her mother and two younger siblings to attend auditions. Her first was for an unspecified Disney Channel program.
The group spent anywhere from one to five months moving between hotels and host families, depending on Cailee’s schedule. “We would all share little rooms, so I’d wait until everyone went to bed to prepare for my auditions,” Spaeny told The Face. “I’d lay in the bathroom with my script in the middle of the night, memorizing my lines.”
But Spaeny’s dedication didn’t lead to any bookings. After four years of continuous rejections, her parents considered ending the cross-country journeys. Finally at age 18, Cailee caught a break with her debut role in an action blockbuster.
Breakout with Pacific Rim: Uprising
Spaeny landed a featured role in the special effects–laden action movie Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018). She starred alongside John Boyega and Scott Eastwood. Spaeny chose the project over a smaller part in the Sofia Coppola–directed 2017 drama The Beguiled, though the pair have since collaborated.
To prepare for her Pacific Rim role as Amara Namani, a young pilot who fights giant monsters attacking Earth, Spaeny took inspiration from actors such as Amy Adams and Felicity Jones. She also traveled out of the United States for the first time, with filming taking place in China and Australia.
While critical reception was generally poor, Pacific Rim: Uprising grossed more than $290 million, placing it among the top 40 earning films of 2018, and offered Spaeny plenty of exposure. New roles quickly followed. That same year, Spaeny appeared in the crime thriller Bad Times at the El Royale, alongside an ensemble cast including Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, and Chris Hemsworth, as well as the biographical films On the Basis of Sex and Vice about late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Vice President Dick Cheney, respectively.
Two years later, in 2020, Spaeny played a teenage witch in The Craft: Legacy, a spiritual sequel to the 1996 cult classic. The movie marked her first time atop a call sheet for any major project and showed the actor’s leading potential. “It was my first time being on the other side of chemistry reads, which was pretty intimidating,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I definitely learned a lot from that and what it takes on and off set to be that kind of person.” Spaeny drew from that experience for her next movie role, which cemented her Hollywood star power.
Golden Globe Nomination for Priscilla
Aided by a recommendation from actor Kirsten Dunst, director Sofia Coppola didn’t let Spaeny walk away from a role again, casting her as Priscilla Presley in the 2023 biographical drama Priscilla, alongside Jacob Elordi as music icon Elvis Presley.
The role was a perfect fit for Spaeny, who was introduced to the Presley family at an early age. Her mother collected Elvis memorabilia and built “what seemed like a shrine” to the legendary rock ’n’ roll singer, and the family even made road trips to visit the Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
Based on the 1985 book Elvis and Me, the movie tells the story of Elvis and Priscilla’s courtship, marriage, and eventual divorce in 1973. This required Spaeny to portray Priscilla across a period starting at age 14 and into her late 20s. Prior to filming, the actor met with Priscilla to get a better understanding of the couple’s relationship. “I didn’t want her to feel like she was being quizzed on her life, since she’s had such a wild journey and has gone through so many ups and downs,” Spaeny told Backstage. “I really wanted to see what she felt like she was comfortable telling me.”
The movie, which was shot in only 30 days, premiered in September 2023 at the Venice Film Festival, where Spaeny winning the Volpi Cup as best actress. She received another major accolade for the role in January 2024 with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture—Drama.
Civil War and Upcoming Movies
Only months removed from the success of Priscilla, Spaeny played an aspiring war photographer alongside Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons in the 2024 thriller movie Civil War.
The actor next stars in the science fiction horror movie Alien: Romulus, which releases in theaters on August 16. According to Deadline, Spaeny had also joined the cast of the upcoming 2025 sequel Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, featuring Daniel Craig as fictional detective Benoit Blanc.
TV Roles: Mare of Easttown
While not as extensive as her filmography, Spaeny’s television résumé includes a couple of high-profile parts. In 2020, she played Lyndon in the FX miniseries Devs, about a software engineer investigating the death of her boyfriend.
Then in 2021, she appeared as murder victim Erin McMenamin in five episodes of the HBO crime drama Mare of Easttown, anchored by Kate Winslet. Spaeny’s performance most notably drew the attention of music star Taylor Swift, who praised the actor for the role upon meeting her at the 2024 Golden Globes.
Spaeny also portrayed a young Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 2022 Showtime biographical miniseries The First Lady.
Personal Life
Spaeny has kept details of her dating life mostly private. She has been romantically linked to actor Raymond Cham Jr., with the couple giving a joint interview to The Bare Magazine in July 2021. However, the current status of their relationship is unknown.
Inspired by her Bad Times at the El Royale co-star Jeff Bridges, Spaeny has volunteered with No Kid Hungry, a campaign dedicated to fighting child hunger.
Spaeny has also started a modeling career, making her catwalk debut at the Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2024 show at Milan Fashion Week in October 2023.
Quotes
I actually feel a sense of relief when I play a character that’s so far from who I am, because I think once it starts bleeding into Cailee, it gets a little muddy for me.
No one gave me the easy way out in Springfield, even though people think of it as a smaller town. It was very tough at the Little Theater. You had to be really good and work really hard.
At 14, I was not someone to mess around with. I was very intense. I knew exactly what I wanted, and I was going to do anything to get it.
I never took an acting class growing up, so being on set is like taking an acting class. Except it’s filmed and immortalized forever onscreen and you can’t take it away.
I got really lucky, ’cause I started at 18 and I got to just be a fly on the wall watching these greats act, and I got to take all that in. So, I think that now I get to apply that to doing roles like [Priscilla], and hopefully that will carry with me.
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