Jena Malone is an American actress and musician. Malone spent her early life in Sparks, Nevada, and in Las Vegas, where her mother acted in local theater productions. Inspired to become an actress herself, Malone convinced her mother to relocate to Los Angeles. After a series of auditions, Malone was cast in the television film Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), for which she received Independent Spirit and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and the television film Hope (1997), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She next appeared in the feature films Contact (1997) and Stepmom (1998), winning a Saturn Award for the former.

Malone began the 2000s with the independent psychological thriller Donnie Darko (2001), which became a cult film. She next appeared in the drama film Life as a House and the miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (both 2003), and the dark comedy film Saved! (2004). She established herself as an adult actress with the historical drama film Pride & Prejudice (2005). She furthered this success with the drama films The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) and Into the Wild (2007), and the horror film The Ruins (2008). She made her foray into action films with Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch (2011), and earned her highest-grossing releases with the role of Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games film series (2013–2015) which won her a Teen Choice Award.

Malone has since appeared in the horror films The Neon Demon (2016), Antebellum (2020), Swallowed (2022) and Consecration (2023), the thriller films Nocturnal Animals (2016) and Love Lies Bleeding (2024), the drama films The Public (2018) and Lorelei (2020) which she executive produced, and the Western film Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024). Her continued television credits include the crime dramas Too Old to Die Young (2019) and Goliath (2021).