Gretchen Mol

Gretchen Mol was born on November 8, 1972, in Deep River, Connecticut, to Janet, an artist and teacher, and James, a teacher at RHAM High School. Her brother, Jim Mol, works as a director and editor in the film industry. During high school, Mol performed in musicals and plays alongside future Broadway actor Peter Lockyer. She trained at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and later graduated from the William Esper Studio. Early in her time in New York, she worked as an usher at the Angelika Film Center, having followed her brother to the city while he attended NYU film school.

Mol began her acting career in summer stock theatre in Vermont, taking on roles in productions including Godspell and 110 in the Shade. Her Broadway career spans from 1996 to 2014. In 2004, she spent a year on Broadway playing Roxie Hart in Chicago. A decade later, she appeared in the Broadway debut of Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, portraying the character Emily during the 2014–2015 run. Mol received a Theatre World Award in 2002. Beyond Broadway, she played Jenny in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things in both London and New York in 2001, a role she reprised in the 2003 film adaptation.

Mol made her film debut in Spike Lee's 1996 production Girl 6. That same year, director Abel Ferrara cast her in The Funeral, and Ferrara would work with her again on New Rose Hotel in 1998. She had a small part in Donnie Brasco in 1997 before appearing in several prominent films in 1998, including Rounders, which starred Matt Damon, and Woody Allen's Celebrity, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Also in 1998, Vanity Fair featured her on its cover, referring to her as the "It Girl of the Nineties." She returned to work with Allen on Sweet and Lowdown in 1999, and that same year took the female lead in The Thirteenth Floor. Her performance as the title character in The Notorious Bettie Page in 2005 required two years of preparation alongside director Mary Harron as financing for the project was secured. In 2007, she appeared in the Russell Crowe-led remake of 3:10 to Yuma, among four films she had in production or release that year. She later appeared in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea in 2016.

On television, Mol's early credits included a role in the 1996 miniseries Dead Man's Walk and several episodes of Spin City. She appeared in television remakes of Picnic in 2000, playing Madge Owens, and The Magnificent Ambersons in 2002. She starred in the 2007 Hallmark Hall of Fame film The Valley of Light, set in the post-World War II era and based on a novel by Terry Kay. She played NYPD officer Annie Norris in the ABC series Life on Mars, the American adaptation of the British series. Her most prominent television role came on HBO's Boardwalk Empire, where she played Gillian Darmody, a showgirl at the Beaux Arts and the mother of gangster Jimmy Darmody, played by Michael Pitt, across the series' run from 2010 to 2014. The cast received SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in both 2010 and 2011. In February 2018, Mol appeared in the Netflix series Seven Seconds as attorney Sam Henessy.

Mol married film director Tod Williams on June 1, 2004. The couple's first child, a son, was born in September 2007, and a daughter followed in February 2011. She serves as the national spokesperson in the United States for the PMD Foundation, which funds research and awareness of Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, a neurological disorder affecting children.