Elisabeth Singleton Moss (born July 24, 1982) is an American actor, director, and producer. She is best known for portraying Peggy Olson in the AMC series Mad Men (2007–2015) and June Osborne in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale (2017–2025), which she also produced. She has received several accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a nomination for a Tony Award.
Moss began acting in the early 1990s and received attention for playing Zoey Bartlet in the NBC series The West Wing (1999–2006). She has since starred in the BBC miniseries Top of the Lake (2013), the Apple TV+ series Shining Girls (2022) and the FX on Hulu series The Veil (2024). In film, she has held include supporting roles in Girl, Interrupted (1999), The Seagull (2018), Us (2019), and The French Dispatch (2021), and starring roles in The One I Love (2014), The Square (2017), The Invisible Man (2020), for which she was nominated for the AACTA Award for Best Actress, and Shirley (2020). She has also starred in three films by Alex Ross Perry: Listen Up Philip (2014), Queen of Earth (2016), and Her Smell (2018).
On stage, she starred in the Broadway revivals of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow (2008) and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (2015)—the latter earning her a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nomination. She made her West End debut in a production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (2011).
Elisabeth Singleton Moss was born on July 24, 1982, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of Ronald Charles Moss, an Englishman from Birmingham, England, and Linda Moss (née Ekstrom), an American of Swedish descent. Both of Moss's parents were musicians; her mother plays jazz and blues harmonica professionally. Moss has one younger brother. She was raised a Scientologist. Her godfather was musician Chick Corea, whose manager was her father. When she was five years old, she made an appearance as a ballerina in Corea's music video for "Eternal Child," alongside other prominent Scientologists such as Karen Black, John Travolta, and Al Jarreau.
Initially, Moss aspired to be a professional dancer. 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. 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.
1990–2006: Early roles and breakthrough
Moss's first screen role was in 1990, when she appeared in the NBC miniseries Lucky/Chances. From 1992 until 1995, she appeared as Cynthia Parks in seven episodes of the TV series Picket Fences. She provided the voice of Holly DeCarlo in the TV special Frosty Returns (1992) and Michelle in the animated film Once Upon a Forest (1993). She appeared in the television remake of the 1993 film Gypsy and played Harvey Keitel's younger daughter in the film Imaginary Crimes (1994). The following year, she appeared in the remake of the Walt Disney Pictures film Escape to Witch Mountain (1995) and played a young Ashley Judd in the biopic Love Can Build a Bridge (1995). She also had a supporting role in the drama Separate Lives (1995) opposite Jim Belushi and Linda Hamilton, and a minor part in the black comedy The Last Supper (1995).
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. 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."
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. Moss appeared in Heart of America and three other films in 2004. That year, she made the film Virgin, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Moss also had a supporting part in Ron Howard's Western thriller The Missing (2003). Moss had a supporting role in the 2005–2006 horror series Invasion, and appeared in television again on a 2007 episode of Grey's Anatomy entitled "My Favorite Mistake".
2007–2015: Mad Men and Broadway roles
From 2007 to 2015, she portrayed 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. She was also nominated for the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy in 2010. 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." 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." 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".
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. 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." She then briefly appeared in the romantic comedy film Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), playing Sarah Jessica Parker's assistant.
In 2011, Moss made her West End debut as Martha Dobie in Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour, opposite Keira Knightley and Rebecca Hall. The play opened at The Comedy Theatre, London on January 22, 2011. Michael Billington of The Guardian described her performance as "Outstanding" noting, "Moss's achievement, in fact, is to combine the everyday busyness of a working teacher with subtle hints she has a suppressed longing that transcends mere friendship." In 2012, she was cast as Galatea Dunkel in the independent drama On the Road, based on Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name. Moss played detective Robin Griffin in the 2013 Sundance Channel miniseries Top of the Lake, a co-production by the Sundance Channel, the UK's BBC Two and Australia's UKTV, written and directed by Jane Campion.
In 2014, Moss starred in the independent film Listen Up Philip (2014), her first collaboration with writer-director Alex Ross Perry. 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." In September 2014, it was announced that Moss would star on Broadway as Heidi Holland in The Heidi Chronicles. The play opened on March 19, 2015, at The Music Box Theatre. Though the play received some positive reviews, it closed on May 3, 2015, due to low ticket sales. 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". For her performance she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.