Monica Barbaro Biography: Her Life and Career

Monica Maria Barbaro ( born June 17, 1990) is an American actress. She began training in ballet at an early age, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from New York University. She began acting soon after college, taking on small roles in film and television in the 2010s, before her first major role in the second season of Unreal (2016), followed by further television roles in Chicago P.D. (2016–2017), Chicago Justice (2017), The Good Cop (2018), and Splitting Up Together (2018–2019). Her feature film debut was in the independent film The Cathedral (2021).

Barbaro’s breakthrough came with a supporting role in the action film Top Gun: Maverick (2022), which she followed with starring roles in the Netflix action comedy series FUBAR (2023–present) and as Joan Baez in the biopic A Complete Unknown (2024). For the latter, she was nominated for the SAG Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Barbaro was born on June 17, 1990, to Heidi (née Wagner) and Nicholas Barbaro. She has a sister Eva and a brother, Michael. Barbaro was born in San Francisco and grew up in Mill Valley, California, where she graduated from Tamalpais High School in 2007. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Barbaro’s father is Italian American and her mother is of Mexican, German and Nicaraguan descent. Barbaro started dancing at an early age and went on to study ballet. While taking electives in acting, she completed a degree in dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in New York City. After graduating in 2010, she decided to pursue acting and returned to San Francisco. There, she booked a commercial and a short film, connected with an agent, and attended the Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school.

Barbaro gained attention in 2013 for her lead role in It’s Not About the Nail, a viral comedy short about communication in a marriage. Her first major television role was portraying the character of Yael on the second season of the Lifetime television series UnREAL. Following UnREAL, Barbaro joined the cast of NBC legal drama Chicago Justice, an entry in Dick Wolf’s Chicago franchise, in which she portrayed Anna Valdez. In 2018, Barbaro also played Cora Vasquez on Netflix’s The Good Cop, alongside Josh Groban and Tony Danza. Between 2018 and 2019, Barbaro had a recurring part in the ABC sitcom Splitting Up Together. In the 2022 blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, Barbaro portrayed Lieutenant Natasha “Phoenix” Trace, a naval aviator.

The following year, Barbaro starred in the romantic comedy At Midnight (2023). The film received mixed reviews for its story but Barbaro earned acclaim for her performance. San Francisco Chronicle declared “Barbaro…proves with seemingly effortless charm that she can carry a rom-com”. Barbaro, a professional dancer, was able to lend her talents in a scene that involved the two leads dancing a combination of salsa and the tango.

In 2024, she played activist and folk singer Joan Baez in the James Mangold-directed Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet. Barbaro took singing and guitar lessons to prepare for this role. For her performance, she received multiple accolades, including nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

In April 2025, it was announced that Barbaro would be making her stage debut, acting in a West End revival of the French play Les Liaisons dangereuses at the National Theater. She will be starring opposite Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner with direction by Marianne Elliott.

As of February 2025, Barbaro is dating actor Andrew Garfield.

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