Bruna Marquezine, from Globo child star to the actress co-directing her second act

Bruna Marquezine

Photo: Multishow / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	August 4, 1995 Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation	Actress
Known for	Blue Beetle, Breaking Through, Xuxa and the Mystery of the Little Ugly Princess
Awards	Troféu Imprensa · Melhores do Ano · Medalha Tiradentes (shared)

For most of her life, Brazilians knew Bruna Marquezine before she had much say in how they knew her. They met her as a small girl in a prime-time telenovela, watched her grow into a teenager on the same channel, and then spent years arguing in gossip columns about her body and her boyfriend. Since she walked away from TV Globo, her career has been asking one question: can the work become the louder story? Lately she has been answering it from both sides of the camera.

The stage name came later. She began life as Bruna Reis Maia in Duque de Caxias, in the Baixada Fluminense on the northern edge of Rio de Janeiro. Her father, Telmo, worked as a joiner; her mother, Neide, raised her and her younger sister, Luana. “Marquezine” is a nod to her paternal grandmother’s Italian family name, Marchesini, and she holds Italian citizenship alongside her Brazilian passport. The family moved to Barra da Tijuca when she was nine.

By then she was already working. She was barely five, having been born on 4 August 1995, when she appeared in a São Paulo Military Police commercial about suicide prevention, and in 2000 she became one of the child interviewers on Gente Inocente, the Globo programme hosted by Márcio Garcia. The commercial caught the attention of the writer Manoel Carlos and the director Ricardo Waddington, who brought her into Mulheres Apaixonadas in 2003. Her Salete made her famous across the country at seven, and the Troféu Imprensa named her revelation of the year.

Globo kept her busy for the next decade and a half. In América she played Maria Flor, a visually impaired girl; Negócio da China gave her a first lead in 2008. Her first adult role arrived with Lurdinha in Salve Jorge, in 2012, followed by Em Família, the romantic comedy I Love Paraisópolis, the series Nada Será Como Antes and, in 2018, the medieval telenovela Deus Salve o Rei, where she lost five kilos to play the villain Catarina and drew a hostile response from viewers.

The cost of growing up in that window was high, and she has been direct about it. Lurdinha, she told Glamour, was the first time she realised she was a woman and was being objectified; she was still a teenager, the press was speculating about her love life every week, and she considered giving up acting. In 2018 she spoke publicly about image disorders, depression and self-esteem problems that she tied to comments about her body online. Her on-off relationship with the footballer Neymar, which began in 2013, kept her name in the tabloids for years, often ahead of anything she was filming.

Globo did not renew her contract in January 2020, ending a 17-year run, and the first years on her own were uneven. Vou Nadar Até Você, Klaus Mitteldorf’s drama, gave her a first leading role in a feature, but it was shot in 2016, sat for years, and reached cinemas in March 2020 to reviews that called its story confused and a box office that barely registered. Netflix‘s Maldivas, a Barra da Tijuca mystery played as satire, drew mixed notices; one Correio Braziliense critic wrote that she seemed ill at ease in the part, and the show did not return. Even the Hollywood door opened slowly: she auditioned for Supergirl in The Flash and finished second. For an actress who had always been cast by others, these were the first choices she made herself, and several did not land.

The audition did leave her on Warner Bros.‘ radar. In March 2022 the studio announced her as Jenny Kord, daughter of the industrialist Ted Kord, in Blue Beetle, Ángel Manuel Soto’s film opposite Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes. It opened in August 2023 as the first live-action superhero film with a Latino lead, earned largely warm reviews and took $130.8 million worldwide against a budget reported at between $104 and $125 million. The reset of the DC films under James Gunn has kept Maridueña’s Jaime alive, with a role in Man of Tomorrow, but no return has been announced for Jenny. She signed with the agency UTA in April 2023.

The more telling move came at home. Amor da Minha Vida, created and written by Matheus Souza for Disney+, premiered in November 2024 with Marquezine as Bia, a woman who works through a run of romantic disasters before admitting what she feels for her best friend, Victor, played by Sérgio Malheiros. She also produced the series and shared its directing with René Sampaio, Souza and Tatiana Fragoso, her first credit behind the camera. In the United States it arrived on Hulu as Benefits with Friends. A second season has been shot and edited, again with Marquezine co-directing alongside Sampaio, and is waiting for a release date.

In March 2026 she returned to Brazilian cinemas in Velhos Bandidos, Cláudio Torres’s comedy about a retired couple, played by Fernanda Montenegro and Ary Fontoura, who plan a bank robbery and pull in a pair of young criminals, Nancy and Sid, played by Marquezine and Vladimir Brichta. Lázaro Ramos is the investigator on their trail. The film opened third at the Brazilian box office. She told Omelete that she had always dreamed of working with Montenegro, and admitted that on set she cried a little every day.

Her next screen role is already filmed. Véspera, an eight-episode HBO Max adaptation of Carla Madeira’s novel directed by Joana Jabace, casts her as Veneza, girlfriend to Caim and the object of a hidden obsession for his twin, Abel; Gabriel Leone plays both brothers and Camila Márdila is Veneza’s friend Vedina. HBO Max presented the series at Iberseries & Platino Industria in Madrid on 1 October 2026 without announcing a premiere.

The private life still makes news, though on different terms. When Shawn Mendes posted a birthday message for her 31st birthday in August 2026, writing that she had really changed his life, it was the first time he had spoken publicly about their relationship. She remains a fixture of the fashion calendar, a face for Miu Miu and the jeweller H. Stern, and attended the Oscars in March 2026 in a custom Gucci gown by Demna.

What comes next depends less on the tabloids than it once did. Véspera and the second season of Amor da Minha Vida, the project she has shaped most directly, are both finished and waiting for a date. Whether DC calls Jenny Kord back is a decision for someone else.