Elizabeth Olsen's Real Name: Elizabeth Chase Olsen

Quick answer: Elizabeth Olsen's full name is Elizabeth Chase Olsen. She was born on February 16, 1989, in the Los Angeles area. She acts under her real name. Her elder sisters are Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. She broke out in independent film and became a global star as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts give her name in full as Elizabeth Chase Olsen and her birthplace as Los Angeles. The Library of Congress name authority, filed as "Olsen, Elizabeth, 1989-," cites "Elizabeth Chase Olsen, b. February 16, 1989." A second LOC note places her birth in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Britannica says her parents are Jarnette and David Olsen, a personal manager and a real-estate investor, who divorced in the mid-1990s. When she was born, her twin sisters were already starring in Full House. Elizabeth appeared in their TV movie How the West Was Fun (1994). She told the U.K. edition of Glamour that as a child she considered changing her name to distance herself from her sisters' fame. She chose not to pursue child acting and played volleyball in high school. She studied acting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2013. She was also an understudy in the Broadway play Impressionism (2009).

Career highlights

In 2011 she brought two films to Sundance: the thriller Silent House and Martha Marcy May Marlene, in which she played a troubled cult survivor. The New York Times reported that she was quickly tagged the "it girl" of the festival. She went on to Red Lights (2012), Spike Lee's Oldboy (2013), and the Godzilla remake (2014).

Olsen first appeared as Wanda Maximoff, uncredited, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). She had a larger role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), which grossed more than $1 billion. She headlined the Disney+ hit WandaVision (2021), which earned her an Emmy nomination, and led Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

Outside Marvel she starred in Taylor Sheridan's Wind River (2017) and the series Sorry for Your Loss (2018–19). She played Candy Montgomery in HBO's true-crime miniseries Love & Death (2023), and The Guardian called her "absolutely mesmerizing." She was also praised for His Three Daughters (2023). Britannica says she began dating musician Robbie Arnett around 2017 and that the couple later eloped.

Name notes for searchers

Chase is her middle name. Olsen is her real family surname, which is why searchers link her with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. She has not used a stage name, though she once considered changing her name as a child.