Keri Russell

Keri Russell is an American actor whose television career began on Disney’s *The All-New Mickey Mouse Club*, on which she appeared in the early 1990s. Born on March 23, 1976, in Fountain Valley, California, she also appeared in the 1992 film *Honey, I Blew Up the Kid*. Her breakthrough came with *Felicity*, the WB drama that ran from 1998 to 2002. Russell played Felicity Porter, a student who changes her college plans to follow a high school crush to New York, then builds a life of her own. The role earned Russell the 1999 Golden Globe for best actress in a television drama.

One of the show’s most discussed developments occurred when Felicity cut her long, curly hair at the beginning of its second season. The haircut became a widely reported television controversy, but Russell’s later work ranged far beyond the college drama. In 2007, she starred as Jenna in *Waitress*, playing a diner server and gifted pie maker who dreams of escaping her unhappy marriage. The film was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who died before its release. Russell also played IMF agent Lindsey Farris in *Mission: Impossible III* and appeared as Lyla Novacek in the musical drama *August Rush*.

From 2013 through 2018, Russell starred opposite Matthew Rhys in FX’s *The Americans*. She played Elizabeth Jennings, a Soviet intelligence officer living under an American identity with her husband, Philip, in suburban Washington, D.C. Set largely during the 1980s, the series followed their espionage missions and the pressures of raising two children who initially knew nothing of their parents’ real identities. Russell received three Primetime Emmy nominations from 2016 through 2018 for her performance. The series concluded after six seasons, with its final episodes confronting the consequences of the Jennings family’s deception.

Russell’s other screen roles include Ellie in *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes* and the masked bounty hunter Zorii Bliss in *Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker*. She starred in Elizabeth Banks’s 2023 film *Cocaine Bear* as Sari, a mother searching for her daughter in a forest where a bear has ingested cocaine. That same year, Netflix launched *The Diplomat*, created by Deborah Cahn, with Russell as Kate Wyler, a career diplomat unexpectedly appointed United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. Rufus Sewell plays Kate’s husband, Hal, whose own diplomatic experience complicates her new assignment. Russell also serves as an executive producer on the series.