Mary Elizabeth Winstead Biography

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is best known for her movie roles as Bruce Willis‘s daughter in Live Free or Die Hard and as the naif left out of the wicked car chase in Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Proof (both 2007), and as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010).

A native of North Carolina, Mary Elizabeth Winstead grew up mostly in Utah, studying ballet. Too tall to pursue a career in dance, she turned to acting, first in soap operas and then in horror films. She played a bad-girl role in the 2005 fantasy Sky High, but had a lead role in Final Destination 3 (2006) and stood out among a crowd of bigger stars in the 2006 film Bobby.

Tarantino fans got to know her in Death Proof, and bigger audiences saw her in Live Free or Die Hard, but Winstead held steady in horror and indie films as well. She was Ramona Flowers, the girl of Scott Pilgrim’s dreams in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (starring Michael Cera), and appeared in the 2011 prequel The Thing and 2012’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (she played Mary Todd Lincoln).

While still retaining her Die Hard role in A Good Day to Die Hard (2013), Winstead branched out into melodrama with Smashed (2012, opposite Aaron Paul). She had a prominent role as former jailbird Nikki Swango in the TV series Fargo (beginning in 2017).