Anna Gunn

Anna Kathryn Gunn was born on August 11, 1968, in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the daughter of Shana (née Peters; 1942–2022) and Clemens "Clem" Earl Gunn Jr. (1939–2024). She has one brother, Matthew. Gunn is the great-great-granddaughter of William Rufus Day, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, through Day's son Luther. After graduating from Santa Fe Preparatory School in 1986, she enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she majored in theater. During the fall of 1988, she studied at the British American Drama Academy as part of a semester abroad, and she completed her degree at Northwestern in 1990. Following graduation, she relocated to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, where she shared a house with Pamela Adlon.

Gunn's first screen credit came through an episode of Quantum Leap titled "The Play's the Thing." She went on to appear in episodes of Seinfeld, Six Feet Under, and the first season of Murder One before landing a recurring role as Assistant District Attorney Jean Ward on the ABC legal drama The Practice, a position she held from 1997 to 2002. From 2005 to 2006, she was a series regular on HBO's Western drama Deadwood, portraying Martha Bullock. She reprised that role in the 2019 sequel film Deadwood: The Movie. Her other film credits include the action thriller Enemy of the State (1998), the independent thriller Red State (2011), the docudrama Little Red Wagon (2012), the financial drama Equity (2016), Clint Eastwood's biographical film Sully (2016), the comedy drama Being Frank (2018), and the Lifetime film Secrets of Eden (2011), in which she starred opposite John Stamos. In 2014, she appeared in the crime drama series Gracepoint. Gunn also provided the voice of Ariel in the Legacy of Kain video game series between 1996 and 2003.

Her most prominent television role came with the AMC crime drama Breaking Bad, in which she starred as Skyler White from 2008 to 2013. She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2012, 2013, and 2014, winning the award in both 2013 and 2014. She also received a Screen Actors Guild Award for the role. In August 2013, she authored an op-ed piece in The New York Times addressing the public hostility directed at her character.

Gunn's Broadway career includes an appearance in 1996 in the musical The Choir Rehearsal. In 2014, she performed Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater in Sex with Strangers alongside Billy Magnussen, in a production directed by David Schwimmer. In 2019, she starred as Maxine Faulk in a limited production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana at the Noël Coward Theatre.

Gunn married Scottish actor and real estate broker Alastair Duncan in 1990. The couple divorced in 2009 and have two daughters together.