The MCU has found its Silver Surfer in 30-year-old actress Julia Garner. The character, known as Shalla-Bal in the comics, is set to make her first appearance in the much-anticipated The Fantastic Four film which, will undoubtedly send Garner’s career to new heights.
Garner, however, is no newbie to the screen, and chances are you’ve seen her face around before. Her most significant work was not in film, but rather television. The actress is a three-time Emmy and one-time Golden Globe winner from countless nominations in the last five years. Here’s what you know her from.
Where you might have seen Julia Garner before
Julia Garner’s most famous role is definitely Ruth Langmore in the Netflix mega-hit Ozark. She played an associate of Jason Bateman’s Marty Byrde in all of the show’s four seasons, starting out as a dishwasher and then climbing up the ranks in the money laundering business. The scene in episode 7 of season 4 where Ruth confronts Marty and Wendy (Laura Linney) with a shotgun to get the name of her cousin’s killer out of them has gone down in history as one of TV’s most iconic scenes, thanks in large part to Garner’s acting.
Garner followed up on her Ozark success with a major starring role in another major Netflix production, this time playing a real-life criminal — Anna (Sorokin) Delvey, the Russian con artist who infiltrated New York’s upper-class from 2013 to 2017. Garner was nominated again for her work in Inventing Anna, at the Emmys, Globes, and SAGs, but was not ultimately victorious.
The New York City native made her acting debut in 2011 in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, at age 17 and hasn’t stopped working since. In 2012, she had her first starring role in the film Electrick Children, following it up with several smaller roles. On TV, her first major gig was as Kimberly Breland, the daughter of Frank Deal’s Isaac Breland, on FX’s The Americans.
You can see her in action in the MCU when The Fantastic Four hits theaters on July 25, 2025.
