Ashley Johnson (actress)

Ashley Suzanne Johnson was born in Camarillo, California, on August 9, 1983,^[1][2] the daughter of former test pilot Nancy (née Spruiell)^[3] and exploration ship captain Cliff Johnson.^[4] She is of Norwegian descent.^[5] She has an older brother named Chris and an older sister named Haylie, both of whom have also worked as actors. Her sister later married singer and musician Jonny Lang.^[6] Her father was often away for months at a time and would bring back souvenirs from countries such as Japan.^[4] He started a new job nine days after Johnson was born and subsequently moved the family to Franklin, Michigan, where they lived for a few years before returning to California and settling in Los Angeles.^[4] Johnson attended school in nearby Burbank and later studied violin and piano at the International School of Music in Glendale.^[4] When she was 16, her father died of complications from hepatitis C and cancer of the liver and lungs.^[7][8]

Johnson's career began at age six, when she played the role of Chrissy Seaver on the sitcom Growing Pains from 1990 to 1992. The character's age was accelerated from a toddler between seasons for plotting purposes. By the time she was 12, Johnson had been in the casts of eight television series. She later reprised her role as Chrissy in The Growing Pains Movie and Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers. In the one season series Phenom (1993–94), she played the mischievous younger sister of a rising teenage tennis star. She appeared in the 1994 sitcom All-American Girl, which also lasted for only one season. She played DJ's overbearing girlfriend Lisa in the Roseanne episode "The Blaming of the Shrew". During the 1995–96 ABC lineup, she played Gracie Wallace in the sitcom Maybe This Time. She played Alex Marshall in the 2000 comedy What Women Want. In 2008, she became a regular on the drama Dirt as Sharlee Cates. In 2009, Johnson appeared in "Omega", the first-season finale of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.

In 2012, she appeared in The Avengers (also directed by Whedon) as Beth, the waitress who is saved by Captain America. She was intended to appear in future films as his newest love interest (as implied in a brief scene in the film), but that plan was shelved and instead actress Emily VanCamp's Sharon Carter character became involved with Rogers.^{[citation needed]} Although her role was minor, the Blu-ray edition of The Avengers contains some deleted scenes that expand her role in the film and further her interactions with Rogers.^[2][9] From 2015 to 2020, Johnson played FBI forensic specialist Patterson in the NBC drama series Blindspot.^[10]

As a voice actress, Johnson's earlier roles included Sean in the English dub of The First Snow of Winter, Gretchen Grundler on Disney's Recess, Terra in the second and fifth seasons of Teen Titans, Jinmay on Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! and Gwen Tennyson in the Ben 10 franchise. A major voice role came when she provided the voice and motion capture for Ellie in the PlayStation action-adventure game The Last of Us, which was released to critical acclaim and commercial success.^[11] She won a video game BAFTA for Best Performer, a VGX Award for Best Voice Actress, and a D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Character Performance^[12] for her role in the game. On March 12, 2015, she won another BAFTA for Best Performer for the same role in the game's downloadable content, The Last of Us: Left Behind.^[13] In 2015, she voiced Petra the Warrior in Minecraft: Story Mode by Telltale Games and Mojang. In 2016, she voiced Tulip Olsen in the pilot for Infinity Train and reprised the role for the series in 2019, additionally voicing Lake and the Steward.

In 2020, Johnson reprised the role of Ellie in The Last of Us Part II. For her performance, she was nominated for Best Performance at The Game Awards 2020,^[14] for Outstanding Achievement in Character at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards,^[15] and for Best Performer in a Leading Role at the 17th British Academy Games Awards.^[16] She portrayed Ellie's mother, Anna, in the live-action adaptation of The Last of Us.^[17] On her performance in the adaptation, The Daily Beast commented that "with less than 10 minutes of screen time, Johnson gives us one of the best scenes of The Last of Us".^[18]

Johnson appeared in several Geek & Sundry shows, including playing occult specialist Morgan on the web series Spooked, as well as the Alhambra and Dead of Winter episodes on the board gaming web series TableTop.^[19][20] In 2015, she began playing Pike Trickfoot on the Dungeons & Dragons actual play show Critical Role; in 2018, she began playing Yasha Nydoorin in the show's second campaign.^[21] Critical Role was both the Webby Winner and the People's Voice Winner in the "Games (Video Series & Channels)" category at the 2019 Webby Awards;^[22] the show was also both a finalist and the Audience Honor Winner at the 2019 Shorty Awards.^[23] After becoming hugely successful, the Critical Role cast left the Geek & Sundry network in early 2019 and set up their own production company, Critical Role Productions.^{[24][25][26][27]} Soon after, they aimed to raise $750,000 on Kickstarter to create an animated series of their first campaign, but ended up raising over $11 million.^[28] In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that they had acquired the streaming rights to this animated series, now titled The Legend of Vox Machina;^[29] Johnson reprised her role as Pike Trickfoot.^[30] In late 2020, she was made president of the Critical Role Foundation, the studio's charity branch.^[31][32] In June 2021, she was added to the cast of Exandria Unlimited, an anthology spinoff of Critical Role.^[33][34][35] Three months later, she served as gamemaster for The Nautilus Ark, her own one-shot episode on the Critical Role channel.^[36] In October 2021, Johnson's Exandria Unlimited character Fearne returned in Critical Role's third campaign.^[37]

Johnson set up a photography company called Infinity Pictures with Mila Shah, her childhood best friend who works as a production assistant and occasional actress; there have been no updates on the company for many years, though it is still registered as being active as of 2022.^[38] Johnson and Shah also co-hosted a podcast called Wildly Hot & Bothered, which ran for 13 episodes from 2012 to 2014.^[39] In 2015, they created and starred in Little Things, a web miniseries on YouTube about two friends living in Los Angeles and their habit of making awkward everyday situations even worse. The series was not released on YouTube until 2018.^[40]

The first campaign of Critical Role began two years prior to the start of the series as a one-off, simplified Dungeons & Dragons game for Liam O'Brien's birthday.^[41][42] The players enjoyed the game so much that they continued to play it and brought in additional friends, including Johnson, who joined in the second game.^[42][43] After Felicia Day heard about the private home game from Johnson, she approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry.^[44][45]

Johnson enjoys singing and can play the guitar, piano, violin, and cello; she occasionally posted covers of songs on her SoundCloud page until late 2012.^[46] Her performance as Ellie in The Last of Us Part II included acoustic guitar covers of "Future Days" by Pearl Jam, "Take On Me" by A-ha, "True Faith" by New Order, and "Through the Valley" by Shawn James.^[47] She also joined co-star Troy Baker (in character as Ellie and Joel) to perform a cover of Johnny Cash's rendition of "Wayfaring Stranger", which plays over the end credits of the game.^[48] She later provided vocals for the Critical Role theme songs "Your Turn to Roll"^[49] and "It's Thursday Night".^[50]

In 2012, Johnson began dating writer and musician Brian W. Foster, who also went on to host the Critical Role after-show Talks Machina.^[51][52] They announced their engagement in December 2018.^[53][54] In May 2023, it was reported that Johnson had separated from Foster and filed a restraining order against him, citing abuse and threats.^[55][56] All videos and mentions of Foster were subsequently wiped from the online profiles of Critical Role.^[57] In October, Johnson and six other women (including her sister and two Critical Role employees) filed a lawsuit against Foster that alleged assault, domestic violence, gender violence, sexual battery, stalking, civil rights violations, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.^[58][59][60]

Film

Television

Video games

Web series

• Ashley Johnson at IMDb 
• Ashley Johnson on Instagram
• Ashley Johnson on Twitter