If you were a fan of the Suzanne Collins young adult dystopian trilogy, The Hunger Games movie adaptations, you know Jena Malone. However, the hit movies were not the beginning (or end) of her career. Let’s see what she’s up to now.
By Jayne Turner – Staff Writer
Born and Raised
In Sparks, Nevada, where her mother acted in stage productions. This influenced Jena’s decision to be an actress, too, and she convinced her mother to relocate to Los Angeles in hopes of kickstarting her acting career when she was only 12 years old.
Though she and her mother struggled financially, she felt that it prepared her for the nomadic lifestyle of an actor. She was homeschooled from sixth to eighth grade and attended the Professional Children’s School in New York City for ninth grade. Though she dropped out of high school in 1999, she went on to obtain a GED in 2001.
Humble Beginnings
Her first professional role was in the TV movie Bastard Out of Carolina, where she played the starring role. It was a heavy one, but she handled it well, earning her a 1996 Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance and a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a TV Movie.
She was once again nominated in 1997 for a Golden Globe for her role in the television film Hope. This role led her to being cast in Contact the same year, where she played the child counterpart to Jodie Foster’s lead character.
She went on to receive many more roles and nominations before she was even 20.
See also: Books You Won’t Be Able to Put Down
Beyond Television
Her first cinematic leading role was in Donnie Darko in 2001, a movie that went on to be a cult classic despite lackluster box office sales. The same year, she starred in American Girl, for which she was top billed for the first time.
In 2006, Jena made her Broadway debut as Sister James in a production of the Tony Award-winning play Doubt. Her performance received fantastic reviews.
In 2007, it was announced that she would be releasing her first single on The Social Registry, an experimental New York City music label, as Jena Malone and the Bloodstains. A year later, she formed The Shoe, another experimental music project. Her music featured bedroom electronics, spacey instrumentals, and spare vocals. She began performing impromptu live shows on street corners – a side project to her continued acting career.
Check out: How to Make a Reading Habit That Sticks
The Hunger Games
In 2013, she was cast as Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. In the subsequent years, she would work in Mockingjay Pt 1 & 2, the final movies in the franchise. During this same era of life, she began exhibiting photographs that she had taken in Myanmar. She donated the proceeds from the exhibition to Girl Determined, a nonprofit that benefits girls’ education in Myanmar.
Where is she now?
As of 2026, her years of back-to-back acting and creative projects have slowed down, but her passion for creation has not. She is engaged to actor Jack Buckley and will soon release the debut LP for her new music project, IDWK. She is a mother, an actress, and an advocate for LGBTQ, and she herself is publicly pansexual.
Coming up soon, she will have an episode on Books That Changed My Life with Chris Collins, where she will discuss a book that changed her life.
