Child actor in ‘Mammoth,’ ‘Noah’ was 24

Sophie Nyweide, the former child actor whose credits included Lukas Moodysson’s 2009 drama Mammoth and Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic Noah, died April 14 at 24.

Her family announced the news in a death notice, which stated that Nyweide “self medicated to deal with all the trauma and shame she held inside, and it resulted in her death.” Her family remembered her as a “kind and trusting girl,” adding without elaboration that “often this left her open to being taken advantage of by others.”

“She wrote and drew voraciously and much of this art depicts the depth she had and it also represents the pain she suffered,” her family said. “Many of her writings and artwork are roadmaps of her struggles and traumas. Even with those roadmaps, diagnoses, and her own revelations, those closest to her, plus therapists, law enforcement officers and others who tried to help her, are heartbroken their efforts couldn’t save her from her fate.”

Nyweide was just 6 when she was cast in her first movie, playing the title role in the 2006 drama Bella. She appeared across nine more films and TV shows, playing the daughter of Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal in Mammoth and the daughter of Enid Graham and Michael Cullen in Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding, which also starred Nicole Kidman.

She starred opposite Jessica Alba in An Invisible Sign and James Franco in Shadows & Lies. Nyweide’s television credits included a 2007 episode of Law & Order and an appearance as herself in a 2015 episode of reality news program What Would You Do?, which marked her final screen appearance.

A native of Vermont, Nyweide knew she wanted to become an actress at age 4, after catching a showing of the 2003 Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton rom-com Something’s Gotta Give at the Village Picture Shows Cinema, the now-shuttered theater once owned by her mother, the former actress Shelly Gibson.

“She grew up in this movie theater and slept in the movie theater and had a little bed in the projection booth and watched many movies,” Gibson said in a joint interview with her daughter in 2010.

Nyweide added, “I really, really wanted to be an actress and I kept begging my mom. She thought it was funny because before I was born she was an actress but I didn’t know that.”