The Old Man

Having been drawn into a new world by Dan Chase, only to be sent out again, Zoe McDonald, portrayed by Amy Brenneman, makes surprising moves in her search for a place that offers her a future.

Career Highlights

Amy Brenneman created, executive produced and starred in Judging Amy (three Golden Globe® nominations, three Emmy® Award nominations, SAG nomination) based on the work of her mother, the Honorable Judge Frederica Brenneman. Other television credits include NYPD Blue (two Emmy nominations, SAG Award), Frasier, Heartbeat (as executive producer), Goliath, VEEP, Private Practice, The Leftovers (Peabody Award, Critics Choice Award nomination), Tell Me Your Secrets and Shining Girls opposite Elisabeth Moss. She currently stars in FX’s The Old Man with Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow.Her other film credits include Casper, Fear, Daylight, Heat, Friends and Neighbors, The Jane Austen Book Club, Peel, The Look of Love and Words and Pictures. Brenneman has a long collaboration with Rodrigo Garcia, with whom she worked on Nine Lives, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her and Mother and Child.Brenneman is a founding member of the Cornerstone Theater Company, which specializes in site-specific community-based theater on themes of social justice. Favorite cornerstone roles include “Juliet” in Romeo &amp; Juliet (Port Gibson, Mississippi), “Natasha” in Three Sisters (Montgomery, West Virginia), “Clytemnestra” in The Oreisteia (Schurz, Nevada) and “Solveig” in Peer Gynt (Eastport, Maine).She starred in the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Rapture Blister Burn (Playwrights Horizons, Geffen Theater) and the world premiere of John Pollono’s Rules of Seconds. She recently starred opposite Bryan Cranston in Power of Sail (Geffen Theater) and The Sound Inside at the Pasadena Playhouse, named one of the “Best of 2023” by the Los Angeles Times.With longtime collaborator Sabrina Peck, she co-created Mouth Wide Open (The Yard, American Repertory Theater) and Threshold (The Yard, En Garde Arts).Brenneman produced and directed the documentary The Way the World Should Be about the trailblazing work of the CHIME Institute and its mission of inclusive education.For her activist work, Brenneman has been honored by Women in Film, The Brady Center, the League of Women Voters, the California State Assembly, the National Children’s Alliance, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the Help Group and the Producers Guild of America, among others. She traveled to Peru as an ambassador for CARE and currently serves on the Creative Council for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In 2016, she was part of the amicus brief for the Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s v. Hellerstedt and received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from The Feminist Majority for her ongoing commitment to reproductive rights.Brenneman earned a degree in Comparative Religion at Harvard, with a specialty in Indo-Tibetan religion, studying sacred dance and indigenous rituals in Kathmandu, Nepal. She is married to writer/director Brad Silberling and has two children, Charlotte and Bodhi.

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Picking up the pieces after a bruising divorce, Zoe rents a room to Dan Chase not knowing he’s on the run.

Amy Brenneman headshot wearing collar shirt with a blue sky behind her

Amy Brenneman as Zoe McDonald | The Old Man on FX

The Old Man

Career Highlights

Alia Shawkat
as Emily Chase / Angela Adams

Navid Negahban
as Faraz Hamzad

Gbenga Akinnagbe
as Julian Carson

Amy Brenneman as Zoe McDonald | The Old Man on FX

Navid Negahbanas Faraz Hamzad

Gbenga Akinnagbeas Julian Carson

Navid Negahban
as Faraz Hamzad

Gbenga Akinnagbe
as Julian Carson