Elisabeth Moss was born on July 24, 1982, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of Ronald Charles Moss, an Englishman from Birmingham, West Midlands,[1][3] and Linda Moss (née Ekstrom), an American of Swedish descent.[4] Both of Moss's parents were musicians; her mother plays jazz and blues harmonica professionally.[5][6] Moss has one younger brother.[7] She was raised a Scientologist.[8]
Initially, Moss aspired to be a professional dancer.[7] 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.[5] 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.[5]
Beginning in 1999, Moss played the recurring role of Zoey Bartlet in the White House television drama The West Wing, playing the daughter of President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and First Lady Abbey Bartlet (Stockard Channing); she portrayed the character until the series finale in 2006.[9] Her character became integral to the fourth season of the show; in a retrospective on the series The Atlantic noted: "Aaron Sorkin made [Moss] the centerpiece of the explosive fourth-season finale where he basically engineered the most insane cliffhanger possible. It required Zoey to be a bit of a pain with her fancy French boyfriend, but Moss always made her relatable, even when the plot required otherwise."[11]
In 1999, she had a supporting role as a patient in a mental institution in James Mangold's psychological drama Girl, Interrupted, opposite Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, and a minor part in the drama Anywhere but Here. The same year, she had a small role in the film Mumford (1999), playing the daughter of a woman with a shopping addiction.
In 2002, Moss appeared in a commercial for Excedrin in which she directly addressed the audience about the medication's benefits for people who suffer from migraines. The spot proved enduringly popular and ran for several years, providing Moss with residual income as she struggled to make it as an actor.[12]
In 2006, she was cast as Peggy Olson, a secretary who evolves into a copywriter in the AMC dramatic series Mad Men. Between 2009 and the series' final season in 2015, Moss was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.[15][16][17] She was nominated for the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy.[18] Reflecting on her casting in the series, Moss recalled: "I auditioned [for the role]. There were scripts for two pilots that everyone was talking about at the time that were really good, and Mad Men was one of them."[19] Moss has stated her favorite episode is "The Suitcase" (2010) from season 4. Moss stated, "It was just a sort of wonderful bubble of an episode. I relished it and I’m super proud of how it came out."[20] Luke de Smet of Slant wrote of the episode, "The Suitcase” made for some absolutely tremendous television. Don and Peggy’s respective breakdowns all but guarantee that this will be the Emmy tape for both Hamm and Moss".[21]
While a series regular on Mad Men, Moss made her Broadway debut in October 2008, playing the role of Karen in the 20th Anniversary revival of Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet.[22] In his review Ben Brantley of The New York Times acknowledged her role in Mad Men but noted "She definitely doesn’t just repeat what she does on television." He added, "Ms. Moss proves the lie in that assessment, bringing a naked clarity to her unvarnished, tinny-voiced Karen that makes the play hang together in ways it didn’t before."[23] She then briefly appeared in the romantic comedy film Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), playing Sarah Jessica Parker's assistant,[24] followed by a part in the comedy Get Him to the Greek (2010) opposite Jonah Hill.
In 2014, Moss starred in the independent film Listen Up Philip (2014), her first collaboration with writer-director Alex Ross Perry.[10] She also starred in Charlie McDowell's The One I Love (2014) with Mark Duplass. Film critic Manhola Dargis of The New York Times wrote of her performance, "Ms. Moss, an amazing actress fast breaking free of the limits imposed on her by Mad Men...[Here] she creates a complex portrait of a woman tested by love whose smiles work like a barricade until fissures of feeling break down her last defenses. Ms. Moss lifts her and this movie with supple and steely grace."[28] In September 2014, it was announced that Moss would star on Broadway as Heidi Holland in The Heidi Chronicles.[29] The play opened on March 19, 2015, at The Music Box Theatre.[30] Though the play received some positive reviews,[30] it closed on May 3, 2015, due to low ticket sales.[31]Charles Isherwood of The New York Times praised her writing "Ms. Moss, a superb actor who possesses an unusual ability to project innocence and smarts at the same time" adding, "Moss puts her own distinctive stamp on the part".[32] For her performance she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.[33]
After production on Mad Men had wrapped, Moss collaborated again with Alex Ross Perry, starring in Queen of Earth (2015), a psychological thriller opposite Katherine Waterston and Patrick Fugit, in which she plays a mentally unstable woman who unravels at a vacation home in the company of her close friends. Scott Foundas of Variety declared, "The movie belongs to Moss...who seems to have gotten profoundly on to Perry’s wavelength. She plays out Catherine’s decline with such startling, unpredictable rhythms that her every gesture seems conceived in the moment."[34] She was cast in a supporting part in the British dystopian drama High-Rise (2015), opposite Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller.[35] Moss appeared in the Chuck Wepner biopic Chuck (2016), opposite Liev Schreiber.[36]
In 2017, she appeared in Mad to Be Normal, a biopic of the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing,[37] and co-starred in the film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull alongside Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, and Corey Stoll.[38] The second season of Top of the Lake, consisting of six episodes, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017 which is set in Sydney, Australia.[39][40] That same year, Moss began playing June Osbourne / Offred in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale, for which she has received critical acclaim and a Primetime Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Drama Series.[41] Liz Shannon Miller of IndieWire wrote, "[The show] owes a tremendous amount to Moss as its star...as an actor, she has to communicate silently without revealing too much about what the character really thinks.". She added, "[Moss] fully commands each and every moment, every swallowed emotion and thought."[42]
In 2022 she starred as Kirby Mazrachi in the Apple TV+ thriller series Shining Girls based off the 2013 novel of the same name by Lauren Beukes. She also served as the executive producer and directed two episodes. Moss stated that the experience was "definitely one of the most complicated things I've ever done".[58] In his review, Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter declared, "No single actor in the past 25 years has a more reliable television track record than Elisabeth Moss".[59] In 2024 she starred in the FX on Hulu thriller limited series The Veil starring as Imogen Salter, a veteran MI6 agent. She also served as an executive producer. David Bianculli of NPR wrote, "By the end of the six episodes of The Veil, I was convinced that this is Moss' best role, and best performance, yet. She's amazing."[60] Ben Travers of IndieWire wrote a mixed review praising Moss as an actress and comparing her to "Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Carrie Coon" but described the spy thriller series as "regressive to the genre itself".[61]
Moss practices Scientology[68][69] and identifies as a feminist.[70] After a fan questioned whether her role in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale made her think about her involvement with the Church of Scientology, Moss defended her beliefs on Instagram, writing that fans' description of Scientology and the fictional Gilead's supposedly mutual belief "that all outside sources are wrong or evil" is "actually not true at all". She continued, "Religious freedom and tolerance and understanding the truth and equal rights for every race, religion and creed are extremely important to me."[71]
In January 2024, Moss confirmed that she was pregnant with her first child.[72]
^ abcdef"Elisabeth Moss (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved September 24, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
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