Chiara Aurelia

Chiara Aurelia de Braconier d'Alphena, known professionally as Chiara Aurelia, was born on September 13, 2002 in Taos, New Mexico, United States, into a family steeped in artistic and entrepreneurial heritage. Her father, Frederic de Braconier d'Alphen, was a Belgian expatriate from Leuven and a descendant of noted figures such as Édouard Empain and the painter Peter Paul Rubens, while her mother, Claudia Kleefeld, descends from singer‑actor Tony Travis, poet Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, and the builder Mark Taper, giving Chiara a rich cultural tapestry from both sides of the Atlantic. After her father’s untimely death when she was three, Chiara was raised primarily in Albuquerque with her sister Giverny, where she entered school productions and local drama classes at the age of five, displaying a precocious affinity for performance. By eleven she was dividing her time between Albuquerque and Los Angeles, a demanding schedule that allowed her to train at the renowned Lee Strasberg Institute and to attend auditions for film and television. Her screen debut arrived in the short film Dead Celebrity (2014), and she quickly progressed to feature‑length projects, portraying a young Carla Gugino in the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game and Misty Altmyer in Alex Pettyfer’s directorial debut Back Roads (2018), performances that earned her Young Entertainer Awards. The breakthrough role of Jeanette Turner in Freeform’s teen drama Cruel Summer (2021) showcased her ability to navigate complex emotional terrain, garnering nominations from the Hollywood Critics Association and the Critics’ Choice Awards; she simultaneously appeared as Rose Lord in TNT’s Tell Me Your Secrets and contributed to the horror anthology Fear Street Part Two: 1978. In July 2021 she joined the cast of Netflix’s adaptation of Luckiest Girl Alive, and her career trajectory continued upward with a scheduled Broadway debut on July 15, 2025, when she will replace Sadie Sink as Shelby Holcomb in the final weeks of John Proctor Is the Villain. Throughout her rapidly evolving career, Chiara has demonstrated a remarkable blend of youthful vigor and disciplined craft, positioning her as one of the most promising young talents in contemporary American cinema and television.