Katherine Boyer Waterston (born March 3, 1980) is a British-born American actress. She made her feature film debut in Michael Clayton (2007). She had supporting roles in films including Robot & Frank, Being Flynn (both 2012) and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), before her breakthrough performance in Inherent Vice (2014). She portrayed Chrisann Brennan in Steve Jobs (2015), and went on to star as Tina Goldstein in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) and its sequels. Her other film roles include ' (2017), Logan Lucky (2017), The Current War (2017), Mid90s (2018) and The World to Come (2020).
Katherine Boyer Waterston was born March 3, 1980, in Westminster, London, the daughter of American parents, Lynn Louisa (née Woodruff), a former model, and Sam Waterston, an actor She is a middle child, with a sister, actor Elisabeth Waterston, and a brother, director Graham Waterston. She also has an older paternal half-brother, actor James Waterston.
Raised in Connecticut, Waterston graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, Connecticut, in 1998. She is a graduate of New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Waterston's first starring role on film was in the 2007 independent drama The Babysitters, alongside John Leguizamo and Cynthia Nixon. Also in 2007, Waterston performed in the play Los Angeles by Julian Sheppard. The following year, she acted in Kindness, a play by Adam Rapp. In 2010, Waterston played Gena in the original Off-Broadway production of Leslye Headland's Bachelorette, the role played by Lizzy Caplan in the 2011 film version. In 2011, she played Anya in the Classic Stage Company revival of The Cherry Orchard. Also in 2011, she performed in Rapp's Dreams of Flying, Dreams of Falling at the Classic Stage Company.
After supporting roles in films including Enter Nowhere (2011), Being Flynn (2012), The Letter (2012) and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), Waterston was cast in the 2014 crime film Inherent Vice, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film and her performance received generally positive reviews from critics. The following year, she appeared in Queen of Earth and played Chrisann Brennan in director Danny Boyle's biographical drama Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender.
In 2016, Waterston was cast as Tina Goldstein in the fantasy film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opposite Eddie Redmayne. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and became a commercial success, grossing $814 million worldwide. Waterston reprised her role in ' in 2018, and had a short part in ' (2022). In 2017, she starred alongside Fassbender for director Ridley Scott in the science fiction horror film '. That year she also starred in Steven Soderbergh's comedy-drama Logan Lucky and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's historical drama The Current War. Waterston's next starring roles were in the independent films State Like Sleep (2018), Mid90s (2018), Amundsen (2019) and The World to Come (2020). In 2020, she starred in the British-American horror drama series The Third Day alongside Jude Law. In 2022, she joined the cast of the second season of HBO period drama series Perry Mason.
As of 2017, by her description in interview, Waterston held dual citizenship, English and American.
For a number of years she was in a relationship with American playwright Adam Rapp. His 2011 three-play collection The Hallway Trilogy is dedicated to her; she appeared as Rose Hathaway in Part 1: Rose in its premiere at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.
In November 2018, celebrity media were reporting that Waterston was expecting her first child. She has not made public who the father of her son is.
Waterston is a supporter of transgender rights. She has cited her participation in the Fantastic Beasts franchise as a reason for her being so vocal, and has publicly denounced transphobic statements by series creator J.K. Rowling.