Whelan’s breakout role came at the ripe old age of fourteen when she was cast as Grace Manning on ABC’s critically-acclaimed Once And Again. The intricacy of her work at such a young age caught the eye of reviewers:
“Whelan alone is a reason to watch the show… There is such a thing as being too good at playing a teenager, but Whelan has been able to keep her character realistically unpredictable and maddening and sympathetic from one moment to the next” — The New Yorker
“[Whelan] wears her self-conscious teen angst so painfully that you may think you’re watching Claire Danes in My So Called Life” — LA Times
“Ms. Whelan is the standout… utterly convincing as a real teenager—the Claire Danes for the next millennium” — Wall Street Journal
When the series ended, Whelan did what any well-respected actor would do to capitalize on her success… she left the business and went to college.
After a successful run in academia, she returned to Los Angeles and continued acting while developing her writing work and a new-found skill set: audiobook narration. Among her numerous guest-star roles, she has appeared on NCIS:LA, Castle, and the ABC pilot Warriors. On a special episode of The Closer, she received accolades for her portrayal of a bipolar, homeless, SA victim.
She has also had leads in the TV movies Fifteen and Pregnant, The Secret Life of Zoey, and The Confession, in which she played an actress hired to impersonate an Amish woman. Most recently, she was the leading actor in two short films, Avalon (in which she is set adrift at sea, searching for her overboard husband) and Ghosts of New York (a meditation on how we let go of the past and embrace our present).