Taylor Russell McKenzie (born July 18, 1994) is a Canadian actress. She has starred in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space (2018–2021). In film, she has starred in the critically acclaimed drama Waves (2019), for which she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, and the horror film Escape Room (2019) and its 2021 sequel. For starring as a cannibalistic teenager in the road film Bones and All (2022), Russell won the Marcello Mastroianni Award.
Taylor Russell McKenzie was born on July 18, 1994 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was raised in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Russell, who was born to a black father and a white mother, is biracial, and grew up mostly with her mother's side of the family. She recalled that growing up she felt unaccepted by her peers due to the color of her skin. Her parents struggled financially, and were constantly on the move, uprooting their lives sixteen different times to follow her father's career. Despite this adversity, Russell mentioned how in her younger years "there was always an opportunity for reinvention, to create something new.”
As a child, Russell was already artistically inclined, at first, she wanted to pursue a career in ballet and later to become a painter. At eighteen, she took her first acting class and finally found her place. She used her work savings to buy a car, and would drive to Los Angeles, to audition. When her money ran out, she would return home to work, until she had enough earnings to audition again. That routine went on for four years, until she landed her first major TV role.

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