Carrie-Anne Moss

A physically striking turn as a hacker-turned-freedom fighter in the "Matrix" trilogy helped to establish Carrie-Ann Moss's busy career in films and on television, which included lead and character turns in "Memento" (2000), "Jessica Jones" (Netflix, 2015-18) and "Tell Me a Story" (CBS All Access, 2018- ). Born August 21, 1967 in Burnaby, the third-largest city in British Columbia, Canada, Moss and her brother, Brooke, were raised by their mother, Barbara, who nurtured her daughter's early interest in performance through children's theater and choir in Vancouver. In her twenties, she paused briefly in her pursuit of a professional acting career to work as a model in Japan and Europe; while in Spain, she landed her first television role in "Dark Justice" (CBS, 1991-93), an American crime series filming in Barcelona. She left the series shortly after production moved to Los Angeles, California, and Moss worked steadily, if unsuccessfully, in a string of U.S. and Canadian television series, most notably Aaron Spelling's short-lived "Models, Inc." (Fox, 1994-95), and the occasional feature, beginning in 1994 with the Billy Zane action-thriller "Flashfire." In 1999, Moss won her breakout role as Trinity, a leather-clad freedom fighter aiding Keanu Reeves' battle against unseen forces in "The Matrix" (1999). The groundbreaking science fiction thriller was a worldwide success, and provided Moss with an entryway into A-list features: she won an Independent Spirit Award as a mysterious bartender in Christopher Nolan's breakout film "Memento" (2000); a pious Frenchwoman in Lasse Hallstrom's "Chocolat" (2000), a Mars colonist in "Red Planet" (2000) and a police detective in "The Crew" (2000), a crime comedy with Burt Reynolds and Richard Dreyfuss. Moss returned to the "Matrix" franchise for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions," both shot back-to-back and released to stellar box office returns in 2003. She then returned briefly to studio features with the thriller "Suspect Zero" (2004) before settling into a string of sensitive leads and character roles in critically acclaimed independent features, including "Chumscrubber" (2005), the zombie comedy "Fido" (2006) with Billy Connolly, and the Canadian drama "Snow Cake" (2006), which earned her a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress. But subsequent features, including the thriller "Disturbia" (2007) and "Fireflies in the Garden" (2008), with Julia Roberts, found little favor with audiences, and by the mid-2010s, Moss was finding more substantive work on television. She enjoyed a four-episode arc as a tough spy chief on "Chuck" (NBC, 2007-2012), played an assistant district attorney on the short-lived "Vegas" (CBS, 2013), and essayed attorney Jeri Hogarth on several of Netflix's Marvel Comics series, including "Jessica Jones," "Daredevil" (2015-18) and the miniseries "The Defenders" (2017). After returning to features with the surprise box office hit "The Bye Bye Man" (2017), Moss took the lead in two television series: she was a former FBI agent working with a Scandinavian detective in the Norwegian television series "Wisting" (MTG, 2019- ) and a single mother in the second season of CBS All Access's "Tell Me a Story."