Elisabeth Moss

Biography

Elisabeth Singleton Moss (born July 24, 1982) is a British-American actor and producer. She is known for her work in several television dramas, garnering many accolades, including two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, which led Vulture to name her the "Queen of Peak TV".

Moss began acting in the early 1990s and first gained recognition for playing the youngest daughter of President Josiah Bartlet, in the NBC political drama series The West Wing (1999–2006). She earned wider recognition for playing Peggy Olson, a secretary-turned-copywriter, in the AMC period drama series Mad Men (2007–2015), and subsequently won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Movie/Miniseries and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film for portraying Detective Robin Griffin in the BBC miniseries Top of the Lake (2013). For producing and starring as June Osborne in the Hulu dystopian drama series The Handmaid's Tale (2017–present), Moss won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series, among other accolades.

Moss has also attracted acclaim for her film performances, notably supporting roles in Girl, Interrupted (1999), Get Him to the Greek (2010), and Us (2019), and starring roles in The One I Love (2014), The Square (2017), The Invisible Man (2020) and Shirley (2020). She has also starred in three films by Alex Ross Perry, including Her Smell (2018). On stage, she has performed in the Broadway productions of David Mamet's Speed the Plow and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles. For the latter, she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She also appeared in the West End production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour.

Moss was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Ronald Charles Moss, who is British, and Linda Moss (née Ekstrom), an American of part-Swedish descent. Both of Moss's parents are musicians; her mother plays jazz and blues harmonica professionally. Moss has one younger brother.  She was raised a Scientologist.

Initially, Moss aspired to be a professional dancer.  In her adolescence, she traveled to New York City to study ballet at the School of American Ballet, after which she studied with Suzanne Farrell at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  She continued to study dance through her teenage years, but started getting acting roles as well. To manage her education and career, she began homeschooling, and graduated in 1999.