[2][3] Born to an American mother and English father in Knoxville, Tennessee, Hendricks was raised in Portland, Oregon, and Twin Falls, Idaho, where she became active in local theater.

After completing high school in Virginia, she moved to New York City and pursued a career as a model following her entry into a Seventeen cover contest.

While on Mad Men, she also began appearing in films, receiving critical notice for her performance in Nicolas Winding Refn's action-drama Drive (2011), Sally Potter's drama Ginger & Rosa (2012), and Ryan Gosling's neo-noir fantasy Lost River (2014).

[9] Her family relocated frequently due to her father's Forest Service job—first to Georgia when she was two months old,[10] then to Portland, Oregon, where she attended elementary school.

[14] Her mother encouraged her and her brother to join a local theater group in Twin Falls to make friends, and Hendricks appeared in a production there of Grease.

[19] After high school, Hendricks worked as a receptionist and shampoo girl at a salon before entering a competition to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

This resulted in her signing with IMG Models,[20] after which she moved to New York City at age 18,[21] forgoing her pre-acceptance into Virginia Commonwealth University's drama school.

[25] Initially, she pursued a career in the administrative sector of the music business, but was dissuaded by friends, and kept working as a model before auditioning for acting roles.

Her first starring role was as an intern on Beggars and Choosers, a Showtime comedy series about a group of young professionals that was filmed in Vancouver and ran from 1999 to 2001.

After a guest appearance on Tru Calling, she was cast as Nicolette Ray in the UPN legal drama Kevin Hill, which aired during the 2004–05 television season.

Her performance received critical praise, and earned her six Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series over the show's seven seasons.

[33] That year, she also starred in the thriller film South of Pico,[34] and appeared in four episodes of the NBC series Life (2007–2008) in the recurring role of Olivia, detective Charlie Crews' soon-to-be stepmother and Ted Earley's love interest.

[36] The following year, she was cast in a supporting role in Sally Potter's drama film Ginger & Rosa, playing the countercultural mother of a teenager growing up in the 1960s.

[39][40] In 2014, she played the lead character in Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River, a fantasy film set in Detroit;[41] it received mixed reviews.

[53] She stars as one of the leads on the NBC comedy crime series Good Girls, playing a woman who attempts to gain financial control of her life by holding up a grocery store.