Gaia Scodellaro was born on July 15th, 1985 in Naples, Italy. As a child, she was heavily influenced by her mother's experiences as a professional dancer.
After ten years, her Italian father and American mother moved with their daughter and her two siblings from Naples to New York, where she took singing, and dance lessons throughout her childhood and early teenage years. She attended Manhattanville College, then Gaia returned to Naples with her family in 2005.
By 2009, she was performing on stage in Berlin with the live show Ambrosia. Between 2011 and 2014 she continued to pursue her acting career working on Italian television series such as Cugino e Cugino, Centovetrine, Le Mani Dentro la Città, Squadra Antimafia 6 e Le Tre Rose di Eva. Online with the webseries STUCK - The Chronicles of David Rea, Vera Bes, Horror Vacui, Duelli: L'una per l'altra and Forse Sono Io 2.
She was also cast in the Kristoph Tassin film Watch Them Fall and Francesco Cinquemani's Andron - The Black Labyrinth alongside Alec Baldwin, Danny Glover, Gale Harold and Leo Howard. In early 2015 she was chosen to play Sister Celine in the critically acclaimed NBC/SKY series You Me and the Apocalypse sharing the screen with Rob Lowe, Megan Mullally, Jenna Fischer, Mathew Baynton, and Pauline Quirk.