Emma Dumont

Personal life

Dumont was born in Seattle, Washington. She attended Washington Middle School and later James A. Garfield High School before homeschooling in order to pursue modeling and acting. She also attended Orange County High School of the Arts in the Music and Theater Conservatory in Santa Ana, California.

She began her ballet training at age 3 and has studied at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, Cornish College of the Arts and Spectrum Dance Theatre School (The Academy - pre-professional program) with summers at American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet School and the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow, Russia.

She began performing in community theater at age 6 with performances at Seattle Public Theatre and Seattle Musical Theatre among others. Her musical theater training includes four summers at 5th Avenue Theatre. Dumont also is a skilled violist and violinist having played violin from age 4. She has played with the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras and most recently the Glendale Youth Orchestra.

She also participated in FIRST Robotics on a team sponsored by NASA/JPL and Walt Disney Imagineering.

At age 15 Dumont became an avid roller derby skater and participated in the Los Angeles Derby Dolls training programs. Dumont, roller derby and LADD skaters were featured in a 2013 episode of the ABC Family show Bunheads.

Dumont is a member of Mensa with plans to continue studies in mechanical engineering.

Career

Dumont's first film role was in True Adolescents in 2007 at age 12 (released 2009) alongside Melissa Leo and Mark Duplass. She later appeared in the movie Dear Lemon Lima in 2008 (released 2009). Both of these movies filmed in Dumont's hometown of Seattle.

In January 2010, Dumont won the V magazine V A Model search contest, appearing in the March 2010 issue and receiving a Ford Models contract. She worked fashion week in New York City that same year. Dumont has subsequently modeled in Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, China and Tokyo and has appeared in many magazines and runway shows including American Elle, Elle Japon, V Magazine, Cosmopolitan HK, Spur and Figaro.

In 2011 Dumont was cast in a lead role in Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan's NBC pilot METRO alongside Noah Emmerich and Jimmy Smits. In October 2011 Dumont was cast in the ABC Family original series, Bunheads, starring Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop. Throughout 2012 and early 2013, she portrayed lead character Melanie Segal, who attends the dance academy run by the lead's mother-in-law in the TV series.

Also in 2012, she appeared in the independent film Nobody Walks alongside Dylan McDermott, John Krasinski, Jane Levy, Olivia Thirlby, and Rosemarie DeWitt.

In 2011 Dumont was introduced to robotics through the FIRST Tech Challenge and the Girl Scout sponsored Team 25. In 2012 she switched to the FIRST Robotics Competition and became Team Captain, Driver and Mechanical Engineer of a First Robotics Competition team based in Burbank, CA in 2013. Emma became a FIRST Dean's List Finalist at the Los Angeles Regional Competition. Dumont spoke at the 2013 FIRST World Championship at a VIP Dinner on April 26, 2013. In Fall 2013, Dumont became an FRC team mentor and continued to do so until the 2017 build season.

In 2014 Dumont filmed two television pilots for NBC in series regular roles - Salvation (opposite Ashley Judd) and Aquarius. Aquarius ran for two seasons on NBC.

In March 2017, Dumont was cast in Fox's pilot for an X-Men television series, The Gifted. which was picked up to series in May 2017.