Monica Barbaro

Monica Barbaro is an American actress born on June 17, 1990, in San Francisco and raised in Mill Valley, California. She began her artistic path as a classically trained ballet dancer, eventually earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2010. Following her graduation, she shifted her focus toward acting and went on to study at various acting institutions, including the Beverly Hills Playhouse. She first gained public attention in 2013 by starring in the viral comedy short It’s Not About the Nail. Her television career accelerated with major breakout roles as Yael in the second season of UnREAL in 2016, and as Assistant State’s Attorney Anna Valdez in the NBC legal drama Chicago Justice in 2017. She continued to build her television profile by playing homicide detective Cora Vasquez in Netflix’s The Good Cop in 2018. Her mainstream cinematic breakthrough arrived in 2022 when she portrayed naval aviator Lieutenant Natasha “Phoenix” Trace in the major box-office hit Top Gun: Maverick alongside Tom Cruise. Following this success, she starred as Emma Brunner opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Netflix action-comedy series FUBAR. She achieved substantial critical acclaim for her performance as legendary folk singer Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which earned her Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.