As a child, Malone first began taking an interest in acting while watching her mother perform in community theater in the Lake Tahoe area. In 1995 she moved to Las Vegas, where she resided with her family for nine months, and began taking acting classes while her mother worked in a call center. She subsequently persuaded her mother to move to Los Angeles so she could pursue an acting career. Malone has said that she and her mother struggled financially in Los Angeles. She was home-schooled from sixth to eighth grade and attended the Professional Children's School in New York City for ninth grade. She has one younger maternal half-sibling, Madison Mae Malone (born 1997).