Geraldine Viswanathan

Geraldine Viswanathan
Geraldine at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Born	(1995-06-20) 20 June 1995 (age 30) Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2014–present

Geraldine Viswanathan (/ˌvɪʃwəˈnɑːθən/ VISH-wə-NAH-thən;^[1][2] born 20 June 1995)^[3] is an Australian actress. She gained recognition for her roles in the films Blockers (2018), Hala (2018), Bad Education (2019), and Thunderbolts* (2025). She had a recurring role in the series Janet King (2017) and starred in the TBS comedy anthology Miracle Workers (2019–2023).

Viswanathan's father, Suresh Viswanathan, is a doctor who works in nucular medicine and is of Indian Tamil descent.^[4] Her mother, Anja Raith, is from Switzerland of Swiss-German descent^[5][6] and was raised by a father who was a filmmaker and ballet dancer.^[7][8][9] Raith attended musical theatre school in London before getting married and settling down in Newcastle. She is an artist.

Viswanathan grew up with a younger sister and a deep love of horses and animals.^[4][10] She attended the Hunter School of the Performing Arts, Newcastle, where she was in drama class.^[4][10]

When she was fifteen, Viswanathan and her family spent some time in Los Angeles, California, where she went through the process of securing a manager with the hopes of obtaining Disney and Nickelodeon roles.^[11]

In 2015, Viswanathan was shortlisted for the Heath Ledger Scholarship.^[4] While studying International Studies and Journalism, she did stand up and sketch comedy in Sydney.^[11]

At the age of four, Viswanathan appeared in a Kodak television commercial.^[4] In 2016, she appeared in Emo the Musical and went to Los Angeles for her first pilot season.^[4][12] In 2017, Viswanathan joined the cast of ABC's drama series Janet King in the role of Bonnie. Viswanathan was a reader in casting rooms, and was the reader for the Australian casting process for Crazy Rich Asians.^[4]

Her big break came in 2018, when she was cast in the film Blockers.^[13] Refinery29 referred to her as "the film's breakout star".^[14] In the same year, she was cast in the Netflix film The Package and the drama film Hala which went to Sundance Film Festival.^[15] The Hollywood Reporter included her in its "Next Gen Talent" list as one of "20 rising stars among the blockbuster breakouts and small-screen discoveries who are shaking up the industry".^[4]

In 2019, Viswanathan was cast in the anthology series Miracle Workers.^[16][17] In 2019, Viswanathan played Rachel in the film Bad Education, which is based on a true story of an embezzlement scandal.^[18] She received critical acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival for the film, which received two Emmy nominations.^{[4][10][19][20]}

Viswanathan starred in The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020). The film was due to be released in mid-2020, but was postponed to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[10] In the film, she stars as the heroine Lucy, a gallery assistant who struggles to give up items from past relationships.^[4][10][21] About the film, she noted that she feels fortunate to represent brown girls on screen, and appreciated that her mother in the film is blonde and looks a lot like her real mother.^[10]

Viswanathan provided the voice of Tawnie in season six of BoJack Horseman.^[11]

In October 2021, she was cast in the psychological thriller film Cat Person, based on the short story by Kristen Roupenian published in 2017 in The New Yorker.^[22]

In January 2022, Viswanathan was cast in the film The Beanie Bubble, co-directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash.^[23]

In January 2024, Viswanathan was cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thunderbolts*, assuming the role previously held by Ayo Edebiri. The film was released on 2 May 2025.^[24]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Geraldine Viswanathan.

• Geraldine Viswanathan at IMDb