‘Adventures in Babysitting’ (2016)
Disney Channel’s Adventures in Babysitting marked Carpenter’s first major film role, playing babysitter Jenny Parker opposite Sofia Carson’s Lola Perez.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Acting Roles, From ‘Girl Meets World’ to Now
Written by djfrosty on August 23, 2024
Before she was a Billboard Hot 100-topping artist, most people were introduced to Sabrina Carpenter through their television screens.
After getting her start as a child actor taking small parts in various films and TV shows — including episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Orange Is the New Black — the singer-actress landed her breakout role on Girl Meets World in 2014 playing Maya Hart, the fierce, rough-around-the-edges best friend of Rowan Blanchard’s Riley Matthews. At the same time, she was working on launching her music career with Disney Music Group’s Hollywood Records, with whom she signed at age 14 and released four albums over the course of the next five years: 2015’s Eyes Wide Open, 2016’s EVOLution, 2018’s Singular Act I and 2019’s Singular Act II.
Eventually, she moved to Island Records in 2021 and dropped her breakthrough album Emails I Can’t Send the following year. Over the next two years, she would earn her first Hot 100 entry with 2021’s “Skin,” followed by her first top 10 hit with “Espresso” in 2024 and finally, her first No. 1 on the chart with “Please Please Please” a couple months after that. “Music is the only career that is fully, 100 percent me,” Carpenter told Billboard in 2021 of her preference for singing over acting.
Even so, the multi-hyphenate has continued to star in a number of acting roles in between all that slow-but-steady success with her music career, lending her talents to numerous films, TV shows and animated projects since debuting on Girl Meets World. Keep reading to see a full list of the characters she’s played since her 2014 Hollywood breakthrough to now.
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Image Credit: Ed Araquel/Disney Channel/Courtesy Everett Collection -
‘Milo Murphy’s Law’ (2016-2019)
Set in the same universe as Disney’s Phineas & Ferb, Carpenter voiced Melissa Chase, one of the main characters on Disney XD’s two-season animated series Milo Murphy’s Law. Her costar? “Weird Al” Yankovic, who played the show’s titular character.
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‘The Hate U Give’ (2018)
Image Credit: Erika Doss/20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection One of her first major dramatic roles, Carpenter played Hailey Grant in The Hate U Give, based on the book of the same name by Angie Thomas. The film also starred Amandla Stenberg and Regina Hall.
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‘Tall Girl’ (2019)
Image Credit: Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection Over a foot shorter than leading lady Ava Michelle — who played Jodi Kreyman, the tall girl in question in Netflix’s Tall Girl — Carpenter starred as Harper Kreyman, pageant queen and wise older sister. (Michelle says she’s 6’1″ in the film’s trailer, while the “Nonsense” singer is 5’0″.)
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‘The Short History of the Long Road’ (2019)
Image Credit: FilmRise/Courtesy Everett Collection Carpenter travels across the country as Nola, daughter of Steven Ogg’s Clint, in the Ani Simon-Kennedy-directed indie film The Short History of the Long Road.
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‘Work It’ (2020)
Image Credit: Brendan Adam-Zwelling/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection Starring opposite Jordan Fisher and Liza Koshy, Carpenter shows off her dance skills as Quinn Ackerman in Netflix’s Work It.
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‘Clouds’ (2020)
Image Credit: Laurent Guerin/Disney+/Courtesy Everett Collection In this Disney musical drama about a teenage boy facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Carpenter played Sammy Brown, best friend of Fin Argus’ Zach Sobiech.
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‘Royalties’ (2020)
Carpenter played Bailey Rouge in Royalties, created by and starring Darren Criss. She also sings “Perfect Song” on the show’s soundtrack.
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‘Tall Girl 2’ (2022)
Image Credit: Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection Three years after the original premiered, Carpenter reprised her role as Harper in the Tall Girl sequel.
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‘Emergency’ (2022)
Image Credit: Quantrell Colbert/Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection Playing Maddy, Carpenter gets caught in a huge mix-up in Prime Video’s Emergency, which also starred RJ Cyler, Donald Elise Watkins and Sebastian Chacon.