Early life and family
Emily Alyn Lind was born May 6, 2002, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family deeply rooted in the entertainment industry. Her father, John Lind, is a producer and assistant director, and her mother, Barbara Alyn Woods, is an actress. She is one of three sisters who all became actresses: her older sister is Natalie Alyn Lind and her younger sister is Alyvia Alyn Lind. Growing up surrounded by working performers, Lind began acting professionally before she had started grade school.2
Career
Child actress
Lind made her screen debut at age five, playing a younger version of Dakota Fanning's character in the historical drama The Secret Life of Bees (2008).3 Before her tenth birthday she had already worked with directors at opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum, appearing in films by art-house provocateur Gaspar Noe and by Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood. In Eastwood's 2011 biopic J. Edgar, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, she portrayed a young Shirley Temple.3
Her breakout came that same year with the role of young Amanda Clarke in the ABC primetime soap Revenge, a recurring part she played across the show's run from 2011 to 2015.2 Her work on the series earned her a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series in 2012.2 She also took genre and pilot roles during this period, including the 2014 horror film Mockingbird.3
Adult roles
From 2015 onward Lind moved into more substantial parts. She played Ariel on the CBS hospital drama Code Black, a role that grew from recurring to series regular over the show's three seasons (2015 to 2018).2 She appeared as Melanie in the Netflix horror-comedy The Babysitter (2017) and reprised the role in its sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020).3 In 2019 she played Snakebite Andi, a member of the predatory cult the True Knot, in Doctor Sleep, the film sequel to The Shining.3
From 2021 to 2023 she starred as Audrey Hope, one of the central characters of the HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot.2 In 2025 she took the lead role of Cadence "Cady" Sinclair Eastman, the amnesiac protagonist grappling with family secrets, in the Amazon Prime Video adaptation of E. Lockhart's novel We Were Liars.2
Alongside acting, Lind has pursued music, releasing singles including "Spotless Mind" (2020) and "Tantra Practice" (2021) with self-directed, lo-fi music videos.4 She is also moving behind the camera: in late 2025 it was announced that she would make her feature directorial debut with Where Are They Now, a psychological thriller set in 2006 and produced under a slate from Wagner Entertainment and Killer Films, with production planned for 2026.5
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Lind portrayed Melody, the ghost of a sixteen-year-old girl who died in a tenement fire near Washington Square Park after lighting the last match in a Melody Diner matchbook. Melody haunts the park, appearing at a chess table to befriend Phoebe Spengler, and the two develop an unlikely friendship rooted in Phoebe's outsider loneliness and Melody's longing for unfinished business.1
Director Gil Kenan gave Lind the 1946 Italian-influenced film Sylvie and the Ghost as preparation. Lind did not learn her character was a ghost until filming began, having grown suspicious when reading a line in which Melody says "Oh, don't worry." The Phoebe-and-Melody scenes were filmed in three versions: both actors together, Phoebe alone, and Melody alone. The takes with both actresses were most often selected, after which the visual effects team rotoscoped Melody out, cleaned the backgrounds, and reinserted a finished digital Melody.
An early plan to keep the character perpetually floating via a parallelogram rig was abandoned in favor of a grounded, human-feeling performance. Lind did not use motion-capture equipment, and she did not see the completed version of the character until recording ADR, because Kenan wanted her performance to feel more human than ghostly. She initially wore a short, blunt-cut red wig with bangs for a week of filming, but those scenes were scrapped and reshot. On set, Melody's on-screen chess moves were achieved with cables and radio-controlled servos. The character's visible flames were created by coating a dummy in a mixture of brandy and hand sanitizer, igniting it, and superimposing the result onto Lind in post-production. Melody's dress was inspired by actress Lillian Gish's iconic period costumes, and the moment in which Melody descends through the Firehouse fire pole was a direct homage to Sylvie and the Ghost. Although the scenes are set in Washington Square Park, the chess-playing sequences were filmed at Russell Square in London.6
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Releasing. Melody's character, ghost backstory, and friendship with Phoebe Spengler as depicted on screen.
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"Emily Alyn Lind," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Alyn_Lind. Birth (May 6, 2002, Brooklyn), parents John Lind and Barbara Alyn Woods, sisters Natalie and Alyvia Alyn Lind, Revenge (2011 to 2015), 2012 Young Artist Award, Code Black (2015 to 2018), Gossip Girl reboot (2021 to 2023), and We Were Liars (2025).
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"Emily Alyn Lind," IMDb (filmography), accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3014840/. The Secret Life of Bees (2008), J. Edgar (2011), Mockingbird (2014), The Babysitter (2017) and The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020), Doctor Sleep (2019).
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"Emily Lind," Apple Music, accessed 2026-06-13, https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/emily-lind/1487235682. Singles "Spotless Mind" (2020) and "Tantra Practice" (2021).
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Deadline, "Wagner Entertainment Teams With Killer Films On Upcoming Slate Headlined By Directors Tyler-Marie Evans, Emily Alyn Lind And Roxy Sophie Sorkin" (November 2025), https://deadline.com/2025/11/wagner-entertainment-killer-films-emily-alyn-lind-1236613308/. Feature directorial debut Where Are They Now, a 2006-set psychological thriller, with the slate going into production in 2026.
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Spook Central, "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Filming Locations" (July 26, 2024), https://www.spookcentral.tk/2024/07/26/ghostbusters-frozen-empire-filming-locations.html. The Phoebe-and-Melody chess sequence, shown as Washington Square Park, was filmed at Russell Square in London.
