Chloe Bennet

Early life

Chloe Bennet was born Chloe Wang in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of Bennet Wang, an investment banker, and Stephanie Lynn Crane, an internist.

Bennet's father is Han Chinese and her mother is Caucasian American. She has six brothers: three biological, two foster and one adopted; two are African American and one is Mexican-Filipino. She attended St. Ignatius College Prep. At 15, she moved to China to pursue a singing career under her birthname, Chloe Wang (汪可盈).

Career

While in China, Bennet lived with her paternal grandmother in Beijing, and studied Mandarin. She performed as a singer and then moved to Los Angeles, California. Her first on-screen appearance was as a host for the short-lived TeenNick summer dance series The Nightlife. She appeared in the 2011 music video for South Korean band BIGBANG's extended play musical recording Tonight.

While pursuing an acting career in Hollywood, she changed her professional name to "Chloe Bennet", after having trouble booking gigs with her last name. According to Bennet, using her father's first name rather than his last name avoids difficulties being cast as an ethnic Asian American while respecting her father. In September 2017, after actor Ed Skrein stepped down from his role as Major Ben Daimio in the then-in production film Hellboy following backlash over the fact that Skrein, a white man, was playing Daimio, a character who is Japanese-American in the Hellboy comics, Bennet applauded Skrein's decision, and addressed her own experiences as an Asian actor in Hollywood, saying, "Changing my last name doesn't change the fact that my BLOOD is half Chinese, that I lived in China, speak Mandarin or that I was culturally raised both American and Chinese. It means I had to pay my rent, and Hollywood is racist and wouldn't cast me with a last name that made them uncomfortable." Bennet had previously commented on the results of her name change in April 2016 by saying, "Oh, the first audition I went on after I changed my name, I got booked. So that’s a pretty clear little snippet of how Hollywood works."

From 2012-13, she played a recurring supporting role in the ABC drama series Nashville as Hailey. In December 2012, she was cast as a series regular on the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which premiered on September 24, 2013, where she portrays the character Daisy "Skye" Johnson / Quake.

In 2017 she was cast in the MGM's musical remake of the 1983 Martha Coolidge film, Valley Girl as the "Queen Bee" Karen.

Singles