Beginning her career at age 9 by acting in commercials, Dennings said her family never had much money for formal acting training.[10] Her first acting job was an advertisement for potato chips that included a poisonous ingredient and never made it to market.[11] In her early years, she worked as an extra to earn her SAG card.[10]
Dennings was homeschooled; her only enrollment at a traditional school was for a half-day at Friends' Central School.[1] She graduated from high school early at age 14,[12] and moved with her family to Los Angeles to pursue acting full time.[3] In an interview with Philadelphia magazine in 2008, she explained that she chose "Dennings" as her professional surname because she thought her family name was "a little hideous" and she "wanted to know when someone really knew [her] or they didn't."[1]
Career
2000–2003: Early career
Dennings made her professional debut with an appearance on HBO's Sex and the City in 2000, in the episode "Hot Child in the City", playing an obnoxious 13-year-old who hires Samantha to handle publicity for her bat mitzvah.[3][13] She then starred on the short-lived WB sitcom Raising Dad from 2001 to 2002 as Sarah, a 15-year-old raised by her widowed father (Bob Saget), with a pre-teen sister (Brie Larson). In 2002, Dennings appeared in the Disney Channel film The Scream Team as a teenager who stumbles into a group of ghosts. She was cast for a five-episode run on The WB's Everwood, but the role was recast with Nora Zehetner.[14]
Dennings continued working on television, guest-starring on Without a Trace as a teen whose boyfriend goes missing, and on Less than Perfect in 2003. In February 2004, she was cast in a pilot for CBS titled Sudbury, about a family of modern-day witches, based on the 1998 film Practical Magic, but the series was not picked up.[15][16] Dennings had a recurring role on ER from 2005 to 2006 as Zoe Butler, and twice guest-starred in the CSI franchise: first on CSI, as Missy Wilson in the 2004 episode "Early Rollout". Secondly, she played Sarah Endecott on CSI: NY, in the 2005 episode "Manhattan Manhunt".
In September 2008, Dennings was involved in a project to adapt Don DeLillo's novel End Zone as a film. Actors Sam Rockwell and Josh Hartnett were also involved, but the project was not greenlit because of its subject matter of nuclear war was considered too controversial.[22]
In 2009, Dennings appeared in The Answer Man, a film about a celebrity author whose manifestos become a sort of new Bible. She also co-starred in the Robert Rodriguez-directed dark children's film Shorts that year.[23] She played Stacey Thompson, the teenage older sister of the protagonist Toe (Jimmy Bennett).[24]
The following year, she starred in the independent feature Daydream Nation, as a girl who moves from the city to a strange rural town, and is caught in a love triangle with her high school teacher (Josh Lucas) and a teenage drug dealer (Reece Thompson).[30] The film began shooting in Vancouver in early 2010, and was written and directed by Michael Golbach.[31] In May 2010, Dennings appeared in a music video for "40 Dogs (Like Romeo and Juliet)", a single by Austin, Texas-based musician Bob Schneider. Robert Rodriguez directed the video, which was filmed in various locations around Austin.[32]
Dennings was part of the cast of the Marvel Studios film Thor, released in May 2011, and directed by Kenneth Branagh. She played Darcy Lewis, a tech-savvy sidekick and assistant to Natalie Portman's character, Jane Foster.[33] The film went into production in January 2010, and was shot in New Mexico for six weeks in early 2010.[30]
In February 2011, Dennings was cast in 2 Broke Girls, a CBS sitcom written and produced by Michael Patrick King and comedian Whitney Cummings.[34] The series debuted on September 19, 2011, and follows the lives of two underemployed girls. Beth Behrs co-stars as a Manhattan heiress who lost her inheritance, while Dennings plays a tough outspoken girl from Brooklyn.[35] Dennings liked the idea of reaching a wider audience with her work, so she accepted the role on the network sitcom.[36] On May 12, 2017, CBS canceled the series after six seasons.[37]
The video premiered on April 4, 2013.[42] In 2013, Dennings reprised her role as Darcy Lewis in Thor: The Dark World.[43] She worked on the film and 2 Broke Girls at the same time, flying to London to film for six months between breaks on her CBS sitcom.[44]
In 2018, it was announced that Dennings would star as Abby in the comedy film Friendsgiving.[45]
In 2008, Dennings stated that Judaism "is an important part of my history, but, as a whole, religion is not a part of my life." She considers herself more ethnically and culturally affiliated than religiously so.[6]
On May 6, 2021, it was confirmed that Dennings was in a relationship with musician Andrew W.K.; the two met in Los Angeles earlier that year.[58] A week later, on May 13, 2021, the couple announced their engagement on Instagram.[59] They married on November 27, 2023, at their Los Angeles home.[60][61]