Clea DuVall: A Look at the Actress' Hollywood Journey From '90s Cool Girl to Writer and Director

In the late '90s, Clea DuVall was known for her edgy roles in films like The Faculty; Girl, Interrupted and But I’m a Cheerleader, but she’s expanded her horizons considerably in recent years. While she’ll forever have cool-girl cred for her work as an actress, she’s also had a fascinating second act as a writer, director and showrunner. Here’s a look at how she went from '90s starlet to TV fixture to behind-the-scenes powerhouse.

The queen of teen angst

Clea Duvall began her career in 1996, with a role in the low-budget movie Little Witches. The next year she memorably appeared in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her breakout came in 1998, when she played a goth high school student in the horror movie The Faculty. 

DuVall described the characters she played in her early years as “angsty teenagers with too much eye makeup” — and these characters made a major impact on contemporary teen viewers. Supporting roles in teen classics like Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) and She’s All That (1999) solidified her status as the ultimate surly teen queen, and she even acted opposite her angsty It Girl predecessor, Winona Ryder, in the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. 

Many of DuVall’s early films have developed cult followings over the years, and none of them had a bigger impact than the 1999 indie comedy But I’m a Cheerleader. The stylized, colorful film stars Natasha Lyonne as a high school cheerleader who gets sent to a conversion therapy camp when her parents start suspecting she’s gay. Once there, she ends up falling for DuVall’s very un-cheerleader-like character. 

While DuVall came out privately as a teen, she didn’t publicly reveal she was a lesbian until 2016, and she’s said that over the years, countless teen girls (and even their parents) have told her what a difference the film has made in their lives — an experience that made her say, “OK, this is what it feels like to do something that matters.”

From teen movies to TV

After her run of '90s teen movies, DuVall acted in films like Ghosts of Mars (2001), Identity (2003), 21 Grams (2003), The Grudge (2004), Zodiac (2007) and Argo (2012). She also branched out to TV, playing a fortune teller in HBO’s eerie '30s-set series Carnivàle, which ran from 2003 to 2005. More TV roles followed, in shows like Heroes (2006 to 2007), American Horror Story (2012 to 2013), The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015) and Better Call Saul (2015 to 2017).

From 2016 to 2019, DuVall played Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Secret Service agent and body double in Veep. DuVall felt the role was pivotal in her career, as not only was her character gay (and having a relationship with the president’s daughter!) she also gave the actress an opportunity to show off her comedic talents. As she put it in an interview, “I was known mainly for dramatic roles, told I couldn’t do comedies, so I believed it. Thanks to Veep, I got out of my comfort zone, got to stretch and try new things.”

DuVall then had recurring roles in The Handmaid’s Tale (2018 to 2022) and The First Lady (2022). 

Clea DuVall moves behind the camera

In 2016, DuVall made her feature directorial debut with the film The Intervention, which she also wrote and starred in. The low-budget movie was a full-circle moment, as Natasha Lyonne, her costar and onscreen love interest in But I’m a Cheerleader, played her girlfriend.

DuVall then directed an episode of the miniseries Looking for Alaska in 2019. In 2020, she cowrote and directed the Hulu Christmas movie Happiest Season. The movie, which stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as gay couple visiting family for the holiday, was a deeply personal project for DuVall. Asked about her inspiration for the film, she said, “I’m a huge fan of Christmas movies, but I’ve never seen my experience represented . . .  this film felt like a great opportunity to tell a universal story from a new perspective. I had this idea that was sort of based on my own experiences of going home with people and being the ‘friend,’ or me asking people to be the ‘friend.’”

Recently, DuVall has set her sights on creating, directing and writing TV shows. In 2022, she helmed High School, a well-reviewed teen show she developed with the twin sister musical duo Tegan and Sara, based on their memoir of the same name. After that, she cocreated and starred in the adult animated series HouseBroken, voicing a Corgi posing as a service dog. The show debuted in 2021 but was canceled earlier this year.

DuVall is currently in pre-production on her upcoming sitcom Day Job, which she created and stars in. Reflecting on writing and directing, she said, “As I make more movies and write more things, I think about what I want to put out into the world — movies that can fill a void for people give me a reason to keep doing it. I want to tell stories that are going to have an impact and mean something” — and we’re excited to see what stories she tells next.

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