Meet Laura Marano, the Breakout Star of ‘The Perfect Date’

Laura Marano has never known a life outside of acting. The 23-year-old, who most recently appeared opposite Noah Centineo in Netflix’s The Perfect Date, fell into the profession at the age of five by tagging along to an agent meeting for her sister, Vanessa Marano (Switched at Birth, Dexter).

“My sister was 8 and I was 5—a really obnoxiously outgoing 5-year-old,” Marano told Decider with a laugh. “I followed my mom inside and the agent tells my mom that, ‘We want to take Vanessa.’ Then I say ‘Well, I don’t have an agent!’ in the most adorable voice ever, because I’m 5. and 5-year-olds are adorable. And the agent goes ‘Oh, honey, we’ll take you, too.’ And we’ve been with the same agent ever since.”

That was powerhouse youth agent Jennifer Millar and her partner,  Wendi Green of Paradigm (formerly Abrams), and they’ve served Marano well over the years. Her very first gig that year was a JC Penny commercial: “I don’t have much memory of that, but I know I was probably really obnoxious.”

By age 8 she was one of the original cast members on the game show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? After that, she took various bit roles for children—including a small part in Superbad, a prolonged stint on Without a Trace, and playing a young Sarah Silverman on The Sarah Silverman Program. 

Her break came in 2011, when she landed a starring role as Ally in the Disney Channel show Austin & Ally, a teen sitcom about two young, up-and-coming musicians.

“For me, since I had been [acting] for ten years prior to doing the show, I was so thankful to have job,” Marano said of her time with Disney Channel, which has historically been a jumping off point for many actors and pop stars including Selena  Gomez, Justin Timberlake and Hillary Duff. Now she’s finally breaking into the mainstream with The Perfect Date, where she plays a smart-mouthed, seemingly undateable high school senior named Celia. (Think Taming of the Shrew.) Centineo’s character, Brooks Rattigan, is paid by Celia’s parents to take her to the formal dance.

This isn’t the first time Marano and Centineo have worked together. Centineo had a three-episode guest star role as Ally’s love interest in 2011 and 2012. It might be because they go way back, but Marano and Centineo’s chemistry is palpable the second they appear on screen together. The two fall into an easy banter—Brooks claims Celia is “his responsibility” when Celia wants to blow off the dance, and Celia shoots back that actually, she’s not, “because Eisenhower isn’t in office anymore.”

“The Eisenhower line is my favorite,” Marano said. “I remember reading that and just laughing out loud.”

By the way, this was all filmed before wildly popular 2018 rom-com To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before hit Netflix and made Centineo a teen heartthrob. Marano recalled overhearing some of The Perfect Date producers—who, including Jordan Levin and Matt Kaplan, also worked on To All the Boys —talk about the 2018 romantic comedy on set.

“For some reason, I thought it was this coming-of-age psychological thriller,” she laughed. “Which it definitely isn’t at all! I’m not sure why I had that in my head. Then when the movie came out, I remember watching it and I was like ‘This is so good! Lana’s so good! Noah’s so good!’ It made me very curious to see what the final product of The Perfect Date was going to be.”

That said, while she loved the film, she doesn’t have any expectations that The Perfect Date will be the next To All the Boys. “I’ve done this for a while, so I know typically when you have expectations they’re always wrong. So, I’m kind of just taking it as it comes.”

In the meantime, she has a music career to focus on—last month she dropped her first EP, Me. “Music has always been a very intense love that I’ve always loved since I was a little girl,” Marano said. “[But] I didn’t have the same opportunities in the music industry that I was so lucky to have in the acting industry.”

One of her songs, “A Little Closer,” is featured in The Perfect Date—playing in the background when Celia and Brooks stage a fake breakup in front of Shelby (Camila Mendes), a popular girl Brooks is crushing on—and for Marano, that might be the most exciting part of the film.”It shows a whole other side of me,” she said. “I think every side of everyone is important and should be recognized and appreciated and all are significant as the others.”

But overall, Marano added, “I’m just really proud of the movie and I’m really excited for people to see this character. Celia is so awesome.”

Stream The Perfect Date on Netflix