Background

Ethnicity: Rachel Brosnahan's father is an American of Irish descent. Her mother is English.

Rachel Brosnahan was born on July 12, 1990, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the United States, to Carol and Earl Brosnahan. Brosnahan is the oldest child of three. Her father worked at a children's publishing company. Brosnahan's aunt was designer Kate Spade.

Education

Raised in Highland Park, Illinois, Brosnahan began showing a serious interest in acting after performing in musicals at Northwood Junior High School. The budding actress attended Broadway boot camp as a teen and graduated from Highland Park High School before finishing her education at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2012.

Career

While in high school, Brosnahan made her film debut in Michael Bay's horror flick The Unborn (2009). From there she appeared in small roles on various network television shows such as Gossip Girl, CSI: Miami, In Treatment, The Good Wife and Orange Is the New Black before landing recurring roles on shows like The Black List and House of Cards.

In film Brosnahan began getting real notice starting in 2013 when she starred in the film Beautiful Creatures, playing opposite Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, and Jeremy Irons.

A year later, the actress took on the role of Abby Isaacs in WGN America's Manhattan, as well as the character Ellie in Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes. Concerning the latter project, Brosnahan later went on the record with The Hollywood Reporter saying she regrets working with the famed director due to the sexual allegations surrounding him.

“Honestly, it’s the decision that I have made in my life that is the most inconsistent with everything I stand for and believe in, both publicly and privately,” she said. “And while I can’t take it back, it’s important to me, moving forward, to make decisions that better reflect the things that I value and my worldview.”

However, it was when Brosnahan landed the titular role of Miriam "Midge" Maisel - a 1950s dutiful Jewish housewife who realizes she has a flair for comedy - on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, that Hollywood realized she was a force to be reckoned with. Inspired by the lives of trailblazing comediennes Joan Rivers and Totie Fields, the show was not only a hit for Amazon, but Brosnahan would also win a Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for her work on the series.

She first appeared on stage in 2009 in Up at the Steppenwolf Theater, which was followed by her Broadway debut in The Big Knife with the Roundabout Theater Company in 2013. In 2016 she played Desdemona in Othello at New York Theater Workshop opposite David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig.

"This is a story about a bold and brilliant and complicated woman, and I am so endlessly proud to be a part of it, but there are so many women's stories out there that still need and deserve to be told," the actress said during her acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes.

Outside of her nominations and subsequent wins for Mrs. Maisel, Brosnahan was previously nominated for an Emmy for her supporting role as Rachel Posner in House of Cards, as well as a SAG Award for the show in the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series category.

Brosnahan will appear in the upcoming drama film Ironbark, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. The film is set to be released in January 2020.

Achievements

• 

  In 2018, Brosnahan won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Musical or Comedy and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on the comedy-drama series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
  
  She has been featured on the covers of magazines including Variety, Modern Luxury, InStyle, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, among others.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Louder Than Bombs

    (Louder Than Bombs explores the death of a famous photogra...)

    2015
  • James White

    (Self-destructive twenty-something James White (Christophe...)

    2015
  • Patriots Day

    (Mark Wahlberg shines in this all-star action-thriller tha...)

    2016
  • The Truth About Average Guys

    (An insecure man has his dimwitted actor friend pose as hi...)

    2009
  • Beautiful Creatures

    (Based on the New York Times best-selling young adult nove...)

    2013
  • The Unborn

    (Enter a world of unrelenting evil as terror finds a new f...)

    2009
  • I'm Obsessed With You

    (When a magnetic movie star crashes their party, four coll...)

    2014
  • Nor'easter

    (When an abducted boy mysteriously returns to his island h...)

    2012
  • Burn Country

    (A former Afghan journalist seeking asylum discovers the d...)

    2016
  • Coming Up Roses

    (Single mother Diane (Bernadette Peters) struggles with he...)

    2011
  • The Finest Hours

    (When a massive winter storm traps more than 30 sailors on...)

    2016
  • A New York Heartbeat

    (Spider, a young gang leader, gets in over his head when h...)

    2013
  • Change In The Air

    (Now in Theaters. A peaceful community is forever changed ...)

    2018

• TV series

  • Manhattan

    (Set against the backdrop of the greatest race against tim...)

  • House of Cards Complete Seasons

    (House of Cards is an American political thriller web tele...)

  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

    (Winner of 8 Emmy Awards. In 1958 New York, Midge Maisel's...)

Religion

Although there has been much public curiosity on whether Brosnahan is actually Jewish (she is not), she says she's very familiar with the culture. "I’ve spent more time in a temple than I ever have in a church," she told the Chicago Tribune, adding: "I spent so many Shabbat dinners with friends. I’ve probably been to 150 bar mitzvahs.”

Most of all she is a very spiritual kind of person. In her opinion to believe in something is spirituality.

Politics

Rachel is not a political kind of person as she never gives her views on any political issue.

Views

Rachel is a big supporter of the Global Citizen organization whose goal is to help bring an end to extreme poverty by 2030. Brosnahan has twice completed the "Live Below the Line" challenge. The challenge brings awareness to extreme poverty by requiring you to live on only $1.50 per day for food/drink for 5 days. She mainly ate ramen noodles and macaroni & cheese. The experience helped to open her eyes to the struggles that people who live in extreme poverty face and changed the way she looked at food.

Quotations: "You are the only you. That means you don't lose roles to anybody else. There's no competition, so they either want you or they don't want you, and it's not that they wanted someone else over you."

"No one should ever be forced to choose between food and education, or medicine and shelter when they don't have the resources. It's very unfair."

"I think everybody, especially every woman that you speak to, has gone through periods of their life where they feel uncertain or insecure. But I've been fortunate in my own life never to have gone through extended periods of crippling insecurity."

"I think where I feel the most vulnerable and anxious and sometimes insecure is when it comes to my work. It's arguably the thing that I care about the most."

Personality

While Rachel has no qualms performing nude scenes when they help further the story and don’t seem gratuitous, but she refuses to take any role that has a sex scene as the character’s opening scene. “It’s really hard to look beyond that in a character, regardless of what a director is trying to say.”

Interests

• Writers

  The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

• Sport & Clubs

  basketball, snowboarding, wrestling, lacrosse

Connections

In 2015, Brosnahan met actor Jason Ralph while the two were working on the television series Manhattan together. Ever since then, they've been an item but have kept their relationship private. It was reported in 2018 that they had recently married but she later revealed in January 2019 that they had been married "for years" before their relationship became public.

Father:

Earl Brosnahan

Mother:

Carol Brosnahan

Spouse:

Jason Ralph

aunt:

Kate Spade

colleague:

Casey Affleck

colleague:

Idris Elba

colleague:

Jesse Eisenberg

colleague:

Chris Pine

colleague:

James Franco

colleague:

Will Smith

colleague:

Kevin Bacon

colleague:

Tom Holland

colleague:

Benedict Cumberbatch

colleague:

Karen Gillan

References

• Rachel Brosnahan on Instagram
• Rachel Brosnahan on Facebook
• Rachel Brosnahan on Twitter