Chris Messina

Info

Full Name: Chris Messina
Date of birth: August 11, 1974 (52 years old)
Location: New York, New York
Country: USA

Chris Messina has been active for 28 years, participating in 27 movies that average a 6.2/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

Some actors get recognised long before anyone learns their name, and Chris Messina spent the best part of fifteen years in that particular limbo. The understanding boyfriend, the worn-down husband, the detective having a bad night: small parts in big films, one after another. He was born in Northport, on Long Island, on 11 August 1974, and his career is the story of a supporting player who simply outlasted everyone's expectations.

His training was pure New York. He took a theatre scholarship at Marymount Manhattan College and walked out after a single semester, convinced he'd learn more from private teachers and actual stages. The nineties went by off-Broadway and in tiny roles: a Fox Books salesman in 'You've Got Mail' (1998) and a card player called Higgins in 'Rounders' (1998). His Broadway debut came in 2003 with 'Salome', the staged reading of Oscar Wilde's play in which he shared the bill with Al Pacino.

Cinema finally makes room

The real opening came in 2008. Woody Allen cast him in 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' as Doug, the buttoned-up fiancé who turns up in Barcelona to ruin the summer. A year later he was married to Amy Adams in 'Julie & Julia', the last film Nora Ephron directed, and an old friend of the central couple in 'Away We Go' (2009), for Sam Mendes.

Then came the successful brother in 'Greenberg' (2010), for Noah Baumbach, and the detective working a lift full of suspects in 'Devil' (2010). The biggest push, though, came from Ben Affleck, who put him in the CIA crisis room in 'Argo' (2012). The film took Best Picture and its cast won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble. The two of them teamed up again on 'Live by Night' (2017).

Danny Castellano and a decade of television

Television took to him early. He played Ted Fairwell, the conservative lawyer who drove Claire up the wall in the final run of 'Six Feet Under' (2005), turned up for the last two years of 'Damages' (2011-2012) and played Reese Lansing, the network heir and son of Jane Fonda's character, in 'The Newsroom' (2012-2014), written by Aaron Sorkin.

None of it prepared him for 'The Mindy Project'. As Dr Danny Castellano, the grumpy Staten Island obstetrician who falls for the colleague across the corridor, he became an unlikely romantic comedy favourite and picked up two Critics' Choice nominations. He left the regular cast before the show's final run, then came back in 2017 to finish the story with Mindy Kaling in the final episode.

After that he went looking for rougher ground. He was the detective in 'Sharp Objects' (2018), opposite Amy Adams again; the poisonous college friend in the third season of 'The Sinner' (2020); FBI agent Angelo Lano in the Watergate drama 'Gaslit' (2022); and a washed-up tennis coach who starts a true crime podcast with his wife in 'Based on a True Story' (2023-2024), the black comedy he shared with Kaley Cuoco.

The other side of the camera

In 2012 he co-wrote and starred in 'Fairhaven', a small drama about three friends reuniting in a Massachusetts town. Two years later he directed 'Alex of Venice' (2014), led by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. That same year he closed an odd little circle: in 'Manglehorn', directed by David Gordon Green, he played Al Pacino's estranged son, eleven years on from that Broadway 'Salome'.

Villains, agents and a private life kept private

The past decade has taken him to very different places. He was the psychopath Victor Zsasz opposite Margot Robbie in 'Birds of Prey' (2020), the lawyer squaring up to Rosamund Pike in 'I Care a Lot' (2020), sports agent David Falk in 'Air' (2023) and the widowed father of 'The Boogeyman' (2023).

Clint Eastwood hired him as the defence attorney in 'Juror #2' (2024), and in 2026 he showed up as meteorologist Irving Krick in 'Pressure', the D-Day drama built around Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser. In January of that year HBO confirmed him for the fourth season of 'The White Lotus', which moves the resort to France.

What's known about his private life is very little, and that's deliberate. He lives in Los Angeles with the producer Jennifer Todd, with whom he has two sons, Milo and Giovanni, and he keeps no public social media accounts. He'd rather let the work do the talking, which by now it does perfectly well on its own.