Elisabeth Moss

Elisabeth Singleton Moss was born on July 24, 1982, in Los Angeles, California, to Ronald Charles Moss, an Englishman from Birmingham, England, and Linda Moss, an American of Swedish descent. Both of her parents were musicians, with her mother performing jazz and blues harmonica professionally. Moss has one younger brother and was raised a Scientologist. She initially pursued a career as a professional dancer, traveling to New York City to study ballet at the School of American Ballet before continuing her training with Suzanne Farrell at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. As acting roles began to emerge alongside her dance studies, she transitioned to homeschooling and graduated in 1999.

Moss's screen career began in 1990 with an appearance in the NBC miniseries Lucky/Chances. Between 1992 and 1995, she played Cynthia Parks in seven episodes of Picket Fences and provided the voice of Holly DeCarlo in the television special Frosty Returns (1992). Her voice work continued with the animated film Once Upon a Forest (1993). Additional early credits include the television remake of Gypsy (1993), Imaginary Crimes (1994) opposite Harvey Keitel, the Walt Disney Pictures remake Escape to Witch Mountain (1995), and the biopic Love Can Build a Bridge (1995), in which she played a young Ashley Judd. She also appeared in Separate Lives (1995) and The Last Supper (1995). In 2004, she starred in Virgin, earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and appeared in Heart of America alongside three other films that year. She also had a supporting role in Ron Howard's The Missing (2003) and appeared in the horror series Invasion (2005–2006).

Beginning in 1999, Moss took on the recurring role of Zoey Bartlet, daughter of President Josiah Bartlet, in the NBC drama The West Wing, a part she held through the series finale in 2006. Her character became a central figure in the show's fourth season, which The Atlantic later identified as built around Moss in its explosive finale. From 2007 to 2015, she portrayed Peggy Olson in the AMC series Mad Men, tracing the character's arc from secretary to copywriter. Between 2009 and the show's final season, she received five Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, as well as an Outstanding Supporting Actress nomination in 2010.

While continuing as a series regular on Mad Men, Moss made her Broadway debut in October 2008, playing Karen in the 20th anniversary revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. Reviewing the production, Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that she brought "a naked clarity to her unvarnished, tinny-voiced Karen that makes the play hang together in ways it didn't before." In 2011, she made her West End debut at The Comedy Theatre in London, playing Martha Dobie in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour opposite Keira Knightley and Rebecca Hall, with The Guardian's Michael Billington describing her performance as outstanding. Moss returned to Broadway in 2015, starring as Heidi Holland in the revival of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles, which opened on March 19 at the Music Box Theatre. The role earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play.

Her film work includes supporting roles in Girl, Interrupted (1999), The Seagull (2018), Us (2019), and The French Dispatch (2021), as well as starring roles in The One I Love (2014) with Mark Duplass, The Square (2017), The Invisible Man (2020), for which she received an AACTA Award for Best Actress nomination, and Shirley (2020). She collaborated three times with writer-director Alex Ross Perry, starring in Listen Up Philip (2014), Queen of Earth (2016), and Her Smell (2018). In 2012, she appeared as Galatea Dunkel in On the Road, based on Jack Kerouac's novel.

On television, Moss played detective Robin Griffin in the 2013 BBC Two and Sundance Channel miniseries Top of the Lake, written and directed by Jane Campion, a performance that earned her a Golden Globe Award. She subsequently starred as June Osborne in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale, which ran from 2017 to 2025 and on which she also served as a producer, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for the role. Additional television credits include the Apple TV+ series Shining Girls (2022) and the FX on Hulu series The Veil (2024).