Playing Madonna is the role of a lifetime! Who is Julia Garner? The queen of Ozark who is going to play the Queen of Pop...

It is the role of a lifetime, portraying music icon Madonna on the big screen. The part is surely the dream of many actresses, but only Julia Garner will be able to make this dream come true, as she has been chosen to play the Queen of Pop in a new biopic. But who is the 28-year-old actress who is fast becoming one of the biggest stars around?

Julia Garner was born in Riverdale, New York on February 1, 1994. Her parents are Tamar Gingold, an Israeli comedic actress turned therapist, and Thomas Garner, a painter and teacher originally from Ohio. She has an older sister named Anna Garner. Julia considers herself "half Israeli".

Julia had problems with shyness when she was a teenager, so she took acting classes at the age of 15. Garner herself opened up about her struggles in an interview with W magazine. She said: “I had really bad reading problems and learning disabilities, and I was also very sick as a child, with epilepsy. I felt like everything that I said was stupid, so I just shut down. But when I took up acting, I discovered that I could use someone else’s lines and still express my own feelings. I loved that, because I felt like I was being heard. And not only that, I felt like I could hear myself for the first time.” Garner made her movie debut at the age of 17 alongside stars such as Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson and John Hawkes in Sean Durkin’s 2011 film 'Martha Marcy May. A year later, director David Chase invited her to play a small role he wrote specifically for her in his film 'Not Fade Away'. She has appeared in at least twenty films ever since.

Her first leading role was in Rebecca Thomas' 2012 independent film, 'Electrick Children'. In it, Garner plays Rachel, a teenager who lives in a Utah-based Mormon household. On her 15th birthday she discovers a banned rock-music tape, which becomes an extraordinary experience for her. Three months later, she confesses that she is pregnant and explains that, while listening to that music, she experienced the miracle of the Immaculate Conception. The movie won the award for Best Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the Best Actress award at the Mumbai International Film Festival and the Directors to Watch award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Independent Spirit, in the Someone to Watch Award category and was screened at several film festivals around the world such as Berlin, Buenos Aires and many more.

In 2015, Garner began her acting career in television with a recurring character on FX’s series 'The Americans', starting third season. Since 2017 she has played Ruth Langmore in the hit Netflix crime drama 'Ozark'. In 2018 she appeared in the mini-series 'Maniac' in the role of Ellie, as well as in the first season of the series 'Dirty John', where she played Terra Newell.

She owes her current fame mainly to television. After appearing in several episodes of 'The Americans' and 'Maniac', Julia got international recognition as one of the main characters in 'Ozark', which has just aired its fourth and final season on Netflix. Her character, Ruth Langmore, goes from being a downtrodden hillbilly to a key player in the money laundering business of Marty Byrde, played by Jason Bateman.

In 2022, Garner starred in the mini-series 'Inventing Anna' playing the Russian-German con artist Anna Sorokin. The series, created by Shonda Rhimes, is based on the article 'How Anna Delvey Tricked New York's Party People', written by Jessica Pressler for New York magazine. 'Inventing Anna' was, until the end of February 2022, Netflix's most-watched English-language series.

Her acting performances have earned Julia Garner a series of nominations and recognitions, including some of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Garner won the Gotham Independent Film Awards for Best Ensemble Performance in 'Martha March May Marlene'; the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and Best Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series for 'Ozark'; among many others. In addition, she won the 2013 Fantastic Fest recognition as Best Actress for the film 'We Are What We Are' and in 2019 and 2020 she took home the Emmy award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for 'Ozark'.

In December 2019, Garner married Foster the People’s frontman Mark Foster. The couple met at Sundance and got engaged at Flathead Lake during a road trip to Yellowstone National Park in the spring of 2019. They had planned to marry in June 2020, but Garner told W Magazine in 2021: “The previous fall, my Spidey senses must have been tingling, and I said, ‘Let’s just get married on the Christmas break, because who knows what’s going to happen between now and June?’” They ended up tying the knot at New York’s City Hall, just as her parents did four decades earlier.

Julia was the favorite to play ‘Vogue’ singer Madonna since the announcement of the project in 2020. Because of her talent and her great physical resemblance to Madonna, she beat out a dozen other actresses and singers who were candidates. Universal Pictures, producer of the biopic, has already made her a formal proposal, according to Variety, and it seems like she will most likely accept the offer! It would be her first big challenge as a lead role on the big screen, after years of a fantastic TV career.

Now, Julia will have the challenge of playing Madonna during the early days of the controversial 63-year-old acclaimed music star’s career, who hopes to "convey the incredible journey that life has taken me on as an artist, a musician, a dancer - a human being, trying to make her way in this world,” as she shared in a statement. The biopic will mostly revolve around her show business journey. The statement continues: “Music has kept me going and art has kept me alive. There are so many untold and inspiring stories and who better to tell it than me. It's essential to share the roller coaster ride of my life with my voice and vision.” We certainly can’t wait to learn more about the career of the best-selling female artist of all time (335 million records). The biopic will also address some of Madonna’s most personal moments, a passionate life that has been followed by the international press since she rose to fame in 1982 with 'Like a Virgin'.