Early life and education
Grace was born in Grapevine, Texas, and grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as the only child of Ross Burge, an orthopedic surgeon, and Crystal Grace, a medical sales representative. She trained in cheerleading, gymnastics, tap, and ballet as a child, competed in pageants, and was crowned "Tiny Miss Texas." She has been homeschooled throughout her life with on-set tutors.1
By her own account she became interested in acting around age four after her great-grandmother gave her Shirley Temple films, and she booked her first commercial work at age five during a family trip to Los Angeles. In 2021 she took a college course on media aesthetics that studied The Handmaid's Tale, without disclosing her own involvement in the series.
Career
Acting
Grace's earliest screen roles were the Disney XD sitcom Crash & Bernstein (2012-2014), where she played Jasmine Bernstein, and the daytime soap The Young and the Restless (2013-2015) as Faith Newman. She also appeared as a young Caroline Forbes on The Vampire Diaries (2015) and took early film roles in Goodbye World (2013), Mr. Church (2016), and Independence Day: Resurgence (2016).
Her breakthrough came with the drama Gifted (2017), in which she starred opposite Chris Evans as Mary Adler, a mathematically gifted seven-year-old. The performance drew wide critical praise and a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination for Best Young Performer. The same year she played a young Tonya Harding in I, Tonya (2017).1
A run of horror and genre work followed: the Lifetime film The Bad Seed (2018), Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House (2018) as the young Theodora Crain, the lead role of Judy Warren in Annabelle Comes Home (2019), and a young version of the title character in James Wan's Malignant (2021). She also appeared as a 13-year-old Carol Danvers in Marvel's Captain Marvel (2019) and in the comedy-drama Troop Zero (2019), and she recurred as the prodigy Paige on Young Sheldon (2018-2024). Voice work included The Angry Birds Movie (2016), a young Daphne Blake in Scoob! (2020), Spirit Untamed (2021), and Skye in PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023).
In 2021 and 2022 Grace played Esther Keyes, a teenage abuse survivor, on Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, work that earned her a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, making her one of the youngest performers ever nominated in the category.1 She also portrayed kidnapping survivor Jan Broberg in the Peacock limited series A Friend of the Family (2022). She co-wrote, executive produced through her company Beautiful Ghosts Productions, and starred in The Bad Seed Returns (2022), and led the Disney+ science-fiction film Crater (2023).
More recent and upcoming projects include the romantic drama Regretting You (2025), based on the Colleen Hoover novel, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025), and a supporting role in Scream 7 (2026).
Music
Grace signed with Photo Finish Records in 2020 and launched her music career with the single "Haunted House" in late 2021. She has since released a string of singles and two extended plays, Bittersweet 16 (2023), a pop-punk-leaning record, and the folk-oriented Autumn Leaves (2023). She has named Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey among her storytelling influences and describes songwriting as a form of therapy.1
Ghostbusters
Grace portrayed Phoebe Spengler across both films of the Afterlife continuity. Phoebe is Egon Spengler's granddaughter, characterized by exceptional intellect, dry wit, and a deep connection to her grandfather's scientific legacy. Director Jason Reitman has said he was drawn to Grace in part after hearing her music.
| Film |
Role |
| Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) |
Phoebe Spengler |
| Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) |
Phoebe Spengler |
Grace was a Ghostbusters fan before she was cast. By her account she told her mother as a young child that she would be very busy when she grew up because she was going to be a Ghostbuster.
Developing Phoebe
When Grace first approached the role, she played Phoebe in a more robotic and flat manner, drawing on the character's side notes. Reitman asked her to put "more Mckenna in Phoebe," encouraging her to be more expressive and emotionally present. The final performance landed somewhere between those two poles. The hardest aspect of filming for Grace was maintaining Phoebe's sustained stoicism across long shooting days. She also prepared to solve a Rubik's cube in under five minutes for a scene that was ultimately cut from the final film. During chemistry reads before production, Carrie Coon performed the argument scene with Grace to help establish their on-screen mother-daughter dynamic.
A notable preparation detail spans both productions. Egon Spengler's hair color was changed to blond for The Real Ghostbusters animated series; the reverse was required of Grace, who dyes her natural blonde hair darker to match Egon's original brown hair as seen in the films.
On set
Grace and co-star Logan Kim developed a handshake on the first day of Afterlife production and added new moves to it every day until, by the end of filming, it had grown into a full performance. The two also sang Smash Mouth's "All Star" together on set every day. An unidentified crew member pranked both Grace and Kim by leaving bones at the foot of their trailers and outside the schooling trailer, and the crew pretended to lock Grace inside Phoebe's footlocker at least once during production.
During the mine-shaft elevator sequence, Grace and Kim communicated in Morse code using their flashlights between takes. For Phoebe's joke moments throughout the film, Grace filmed multiple alternate takes and Reitman chose the ones he preferred in the edit. Some shots of Phoebe on the Ecto-1's gunner seat were filmed against greenscreen and composited into the final frame; for second-unit shots requiring a stunt double, the visual effects team performed a face replacement using Grace's likeness. Grace took Phoebe's glasses and a Ghost Trap from the Afterlife set as keepsakes.
"Haunted House"
Grace wrote the song "Haunted House" in March 2021 without any intention of it appearing in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. She sent it to Jason Reitman hoping he would direct the music video. Reitman instead asked to include the song in the film's end credits, where it appears in the theatrical release.
Frozen Empire
For Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Grace cited Harold Ramis's original portrayal of Egon as her biggest inspiration in continuing to shape Phoebe. Grace's real dog, Gizmo, has a brief cameo appearance in the film.
Awards and recognition
Grace's Gifted performance brought a 2018 Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination for Best Young Actor/Actress. Her work on The Handmaid's Tale earned the 2021 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.1 For the Ghostbusters films she was nominated for Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie at the 2022 Critics' Choice Super Awards (for Afterlife) and for Best Younger Performer in a Film at the 2025 Saturn Awards (for Frozen Empire), an award that went to Alisha Weir.2
Personal life
Grace was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 12. While filming Ghostbusters: Afterlife she wore a back brace but found it difficult to keep on for the intended long daily hours. After her spinal curvature progressed past 45 degrees she underwent spinal surgery in October 2022, which reduced the curve substantially.1 She has spoken openly about the experience, including in her song "Self Dysmorphia." Grace keeps much of her personal life private and has said she wants room to have a childhood and figure herself out as a teenager.
Phoebe Spengler's gear and look from the Afterlife films, including her distinctive glasses and her use of a classic-styled Ghost Trap, feature in GBFans.com prop-build and replica discussion alongside the rest of the new-continuity loadout. See our Phoebe Spengler character page for the in-universe details.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
