Mary Neely

Mary Connor Neely (born April 10, 1991) is an American actress, writer, director, and editor. She rose to prominence during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic with a series of self-filmed lip-sync videos reenacting scenes from well-known musicals. She published her videos on Twitter (see below) to broad acclaim. Neely also appeared in the 2020 remake of Valley Girl and directed the 2017 short film Pink Trailer, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Early life Mary Connor Neely was born on April 10, 1991, in Los Angeles, California, to Mark Neely, an actor, and Mary Neely (née Johnson), a commercial producer. Her parents divorced when she was young and she was raised equally between them. Neely is an only child. Her paternal grandmother is a survivor of the Holocaust. Growing up in Los Angeles, Neely has described it as both “really interesting” and “odd”. Though both of her parents exited entertainment when Neely was in elementary school, a lot of their friends were “crew people” which led Neely to grow up in the industry but as she described, “it wasn’t glamorous.” Neely lived in 13 different houses by the time she was 18 years old in the Glendale, Altadena, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Santa Monica, and West LA neighborhoods of Los Angeles. She cites the exposure to so many different kinds of people and places as a catalyst for her interest in performing. Neely started acting in community theater productions at age eight, saying her love for musicals was akin to a religion. During summers in high school, Neely attended drama programs at UCLA and Carnegie Mellon. Neely graduated from The Archer School for Girls in 2009 before studying acting at UCLA's School of Theater Film and Television on scholarship.