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Gretchen Mol Profile |
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Birth Date: November 8, 1972
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Birth Place: Deep River, Connecticut, USA
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Birth Name: Gretchen Mol
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Height: 5'6"
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Biography |
Gretchen Mol was born on November 8, 1972, in Deep River,
Connecticut. Gretchen's father, a school principal, and her
mother, an artist, divorced when she was young. Gretchen
grew up in a creative household with her mother and older
brother, Jim, who aspired to be a film director; therefore,
she was often the subject of her mother's photography and
her brother's Super 8 videos.
Although Gretchen had a regular public-school education, she
was already leaning toward performance as a career. She
studied musical theater, sang in her school chorus and
attended dance classes. Gretchen moved to New York after
graduating from high school; she attended the American
Musical and Dramatic Academy and performed on stage. She
still had to take on odd jobs to get by, but one such job
led to her big break. While she was working as a coat-check
girl at a showbiz restaurant in 1996, an agent discovered
her and got her work in a Coke commercial and on the TV
sitcom Spin City.
Gretchen made her feature-film debut in Spike Lee's Girl 6
(1996) in a supporting role as a phone-sex operator. Small
parts in films such as The Funeral (1996), Donnie Brasco
(1997) and The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997)
followed. When she was cast to play the "girlfriend" role
again -- this time opposite Matt Damon in Rounders (1998) --
Gretchen became famous overnight. She was profiled in
numerous magazine articles and was featured on the cover of
Vanity Fair, which proclaimed her Hollywood's latest "it"
girl. However, when Rounders proved a disappointment, the
hype disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Nevertheless, Gretchen stayed on the A-list for a while
afterward. Also in 1998, she starred with Jude Law in Music
from Another Room and appeared as part of the ensemble cast
in Woody Allen's Celebrity. 1999 saw Gretchen take a role in
another Allen project, Sweet and Lowdown, play actress
Marion Davies in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock, and appear
with Ray Liotta and Joseph Fiennes in Forever Mine.
Although fewer projects were coming Gretchen's way, she
refused to give up simply because she'd been cast off by
Hollywood's publicity machine. After small parts in Rules of
Attraction (2000) and Get Carter (2000), Gretchen turned to
television. She appeared in made-for-TV movies like Picnic
(2000), her brother Jim's Freshening Up (2002) and The
Magnificent Ambersons (2002), a cable-TV remake of Orson
Welles' second film.
That same year, Gretchen starred in the short-lived TV
series Girls Club. She also starred in the play The Shape of
Things and reprised her role in the 2003 movie version.
In 2004, Gretchen married writer-director Tod "Kip" Williams
and appeared in Heavy Put-Away. In 2005, however, Gretchen's
career took an upswing; she accepted the sexy title role in
The Notorious Bettie Page, which was well received at the
Toronto Film Festival. Furthermore, she was cast in the film
Puccini for Beginners (2006) and the TV movie The Valley of
Light (2006). |
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Other
Information |
Graduated from the William Esper Studio
She worked as a hat check girl at a restaurant where her
agent-to-be spotted her and got her a coke commercial.
Her mother is an artist and her father is a school
principal. Her parents divorced when she was young. She has
an older brother, Jim Mol.
Graduated from the prestigious American Musical and Dramatic
Academy. That is the same school that actors such as Lee
Tergesen ("Oz"), Tyne Daly ("Judging Amy") and Paul Sorvino
( The Goodfellas") attended.
Went to the same high school as broadway actor Peter Lockyer.
Grew up in Connecticut. Moved to New York as a teenager to
study acting. |
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