Biography
Born into a creative household as the daughter of Paula Harwood and actor Peter Gallagher, Kathryn Gallagher entered the world on July 23, 1993, in New York City. Her family moved to Los Angeles in the early 2000s after her father landed a starring part in the prime-time soap The O.C. While studying theater at the Adderley School during her teenage years, she began composing original songs. She later enrolled at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, where she started issuing her own material and placed tracks on the soundtracks of the 2011 film Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You and the 2012 release Thanks for Sharing. Her debut EP, How Do I Grow Up, came out in 2012, the same year she contributed guest vocals to John O'Callaghan's "Mess of a Machine" and Erik Scott Smith's "I'll Be Known." Two further EPs, American Spirit and I'm Fine, followed in 2013 and 2014 before she stepped away from music to focus on acting.
Her stage career gained momentum with a role in the 2015 Broadway revival of the rock musical Spring Awakening, whose score was composed by Duncan Sheik. The production's ensemble received the Ovation Award for Acting Ensemble of a Musical that year. In 2016 she portrayed Lily in the Off-Broadway show Dust Can't Kill Me, whose cast earned the New York Musical Theatre Festival Award for Outstanding Ensemble.
Gallagher transitioned to television in 2018 with a recurring part as Annika Attwater in the Penn Badgley-led series You. She also logged guest appearances on The Flash and Blue Bloods while preparing to play Bella Fox in the Broadway musical adaptation of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. The show opened in 2019 and earned her a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2020. The accompanying cast album received the Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album in 2021.
Her recording output resumed in 2019 with the singles "Bad News," "Whistler," and "I'll Get the Coffee." The following year brought Demos, Vol. 1 in May and Demos, Vol. 2 in July. Additional singles arrived in 2021 ("Whatever You Can Do," "Friends to Entertain You," "Take What I Can Get," and "Apathetic") and 2022 ("Read it in the Paper" and "shapeshifter"), a period that also included a recurring television role as Heidi Bergmann in the Gossip Girl reboot. In 2023 she issued the single "It is what it is" and the EP Demos, Vol. 3 (2016-2019), while making her feature-film debut in Parachute.
Her stage career gained momentum with a role in the 2015 Broadway revival of the rock musical Spring Awakening, whose score was composed by Duncan Sheik. The production's ensemble received the Ovation Award for Acting Ensemble of a Musical that year. In 2016 she portrayed Lily in the Off-Broadway show Dust Can't Kill Me, whose cast earned the New York Musical Theatre Festival Award for Outstanding Ensemble.
Gallagher transitioned to television in 2018 with a recurring part as Annika Attwater in the Penn Badgley-led series You. She also logged guest appearances on The Flash and Blue Bloods while preparing to play Bella Fox in the Broadway musical adaptation of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. The show opened in 2019 and earned her a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2020. The accompanying cast album received the Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album in 2021.
Her recording output resumed in 2019 with the singles "Bad News," "Whistler," and "I'll Get the Coffee." The following year brought Demos, Vol. 1 in May and Demos, Vol. 2 in July. Additional singles arrived in 2021 ("Whatever You Can Do," "Friends to Entertain You," "Take What I Can Get," and "Apathetic") and 2022 ("Read it in the Paper" and "shapeshifter"), a period that also included a recurring television role as Heidi Bergmann in the Gossip Girl reboot. In 2023 she issued the single "It is what it is" and the EP Demos, Vol. 3 (2016-2019), while making her feature-film debut in Parachute.
Singles
