Chloe Wang, known professionally as Chloe Bennet, is an American actress and singer. She is known for her role as Daisy Johnsonon the television series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., whom she also voices in the animated Marvel Rising franchise.
Early life
Chloe Bennet was born Chloe Wang on April 18, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of Bennet Wang, an investment banker, and Stephanie Crane, an internist. Bennet's father is Chinese and her mother is Caucasian. She has seven brothers: four biological, two foster and one adopted; two are African American and one is Mexican-Filipino. She attended St. Ignatius College Prep.
Singing career
In 2007, at age 15, Bennet moved to China to pursue a singing career, under her birth name, Chloe Wang. While in China, Bennet lived with her paternal grandmother and studied Mandarin, in Shanghai or Beijing. Back in the US, she released two singles, both in 2011: "Uh Oh" and "Every Day in Between".
Acting career
In 2010 she 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 "Tonight". While pursuing an acting career in Hollywood, she changed her 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. From 2012 to 2013, she had a recurring supporting role in the ABCdrama seriesNashville 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. Bennet portrayed a hacker known as Skye, who was revealed to be Daisy Johnson / Quake in the second season. In 2017 she was cast in a musical remake of the 1983 filmValley Girl as Karen, the "Queen Bee". The film was scheduled for release in June 2018, but has been postponed due to controversy around one of its cast members, Logan Paul. Chloe was awarded the "Visionary Award" by East West Players, the longest-running professional theater of color in the United States, on April 21, 2017, at their annual gala. She dedicated her award "to all the little girls who want to be a superhero; I'm just a half Chinese girl from the southside of Chicago." In 2019, Bennet was cast in the lead role as Yi in the DreamWorks' animated filmAbominable.
Personal life
In 2018, she revealed that she has had anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder since childhood. Bennet has described the American film and television industry as racist against Asians. In a 2016 interview, she noted, "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." 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 wrote a since-deleted post on Instagram in which she 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." She dated YouTube star Logan Paul for a time in 2018, before splitting up later that year.
