The Little Girl From My Sister's Keeper Is All Grown Up & Unrecognizable Now

The tear-jerking legal drama "My Sister's Keeper" was released in theaters all the way back in 2009. The film starred a fresh-faced Abigail Breslin as Anna Fitzgerald, the younger daughter of Sara Fitzgerald, played by none other than "The Holiday" star Cameron Diaz. But while Diaz herself has undergone a stunning transformation in the years since, Breslin is nearly unrecognizable today on account of being all grown up. The year 2009 was a big one for the child star, who was around 13 at the time. 

After all, "My Sister's Keeper" was just one of two high-profile projects she starred in. The other was the hit horror-comedy "Zombieland," which found her sharing the screen with A-listers Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and in a brief but memorable cameo, Bill Murray. In fact, in one scene, Harrelson's character is visibly frustrated by Breslin's character's youthful lack of knowledge regarding both Murray and Mahatma Gandhi. But the ambitious actor was also far from done. 

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Breslin remained booked and busy throughout the 2010s. She appeared in blockbusters like "Ender's Game" and hit TV shows like "Scream Queens." She even played Jennifer Grey's iconic character Baby in ABC's 2017 made-for-TV remake of "Dirty Dancing." Breslin wrapped up the decade by revisiting one of her most famous characters, reprising her role as Little Rock in 2019's "Zombieland: Double Tap." More recently, she's starred in films like the 2022 horror-comedy "Slayers" and the 2023 historical drama "Miranda's Victim." All that being said, and despite her demonstrable success in Hollywood, Breslin's stunning transformation has not been without its challenges.

While the 2009 double tap (pun intended) of "My Sister's Keeper" and "Zombieland" no doubt helped elevate Abigail Breslin's career, she had been acting long beforehand. One of the youngster's earliest roles was in the 2002 M. Night Shyamalan alien flick "Signs," to say nothing of the episodes of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "NCIS" you may have forgotten that Breslin was in. However, her breakout role was undoubtedly 2006's "Little Miss Sunshine," for which the actor was nominated for an Oscar, and the legacy of which continues to endure. Breslin was even on hand for an anniversary screening of the film at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026.

"I'm just so happy to be a part of something, as I was saying, that so many people love and that makes them feel seen," Breslin gushed during a red-carpet interview at Sundance (via Reddit) before going on to recall her memories of shooting the film, noting, "In some ways, I wish I had been older when I did it so that I could appreciate that experience more. But I also am happy that I was at the age that I was at, because I feel like I would have been a little bit too jaded later on in life to appreciate it."

Breslin's life and career have occasionally been marked by tragedy, with the actor being refreshingly open about some of the biggest struggles of early stardom. As he recalled during a January 2024 appearance on the "Vulnerable" podcast, "That's the thing that I feel about, like, child acting and everything, is that you're given all of the responsibility but none of the respect," sadly acknowledging, "[Your autonomy is] not really that important."