Jessica Hecht

Jessica Hecht is an American actress born on June 28, 1965, in Princeton, New Jersey. She spent her early childhood there before her family relocated to Bloomfield, Connecticut when she was three. Following her parents' divorce, her mother married psychiatrist Howard Iger, and Hecht was raised alongside her sisters Elizabeth and Andrea and her brother Russell. She attended Connecticut College for a year and a half before transferring to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama in 1987. Hecht was raised in a culturally Jewish household, with a secular socialist father, and has described herself as Reconstructionist Jewish. She had a bat mitzvah and has spoken publicly about being fairly spiritual.

Hecht's Broadway career spans from 1990 to 2026 and includes productions such as Dog Day Afternoon, Eureka Day, Summer, 1976, The Price, and Fiddler on the Roof. In 2016, she played Golde in the Bartlett Sher-directed revival of Fiddler on the Roof at the Broadway Theatre. The following year, she appeared in The Price alongside Mark Ruffalo. In 2012, she performed on Broadway with Jim Parsons in Harvey. Her stage work has earned her three Tony Award nominations: a Best Featured Actress in a Play nomination in 2010 for A View from the Bridge, a Best Actress in a Play nomination in 2023 for Summer, 1976, and a Best Featured Actress in a Play nomination in 2025 for Eureka Day. Beyond Broadway, her Off-Broadway work includes a performance in Admissions at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, for which she received the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress at the 2018 Obie Awards.

On television, Hecht is widely recognized for playing Susan Bunch, the wife of Ross Geller's ex-wife Carol Willick, in 12 episodes of Friends, and Gretchen Schwartz in 5 episodes of Breaking Bad. She was also a featured cast member on The Single Guy. Her additional television credits include Dickinson, Bored to Death, Red Oaks, Jessica Jones, The Loudest Voice, Succession, and The Boys, on which she played Carol Mannheim. In 2020, she appeared as Sonya Barzel on The Sinner. Her role as Karen in the Netflix series Special earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Series in 2019.

Her film work includes the supporting role of Amy Burns in Dan in Real Life (2007), alongside Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche, as well as appearances in Sideways, Whatever Works, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

In 2017, Hecht and producer Jenny Gersten co-founded The Campfire Project, a theatre-based wellness initiative that creates plays in refugee camps. Hecht has been married to director Adam Bernstein since August 1995. The couple have two children, Stella and Carlo.