Betty Gilpin bio, husband, height, daughter, book, age, family 2025

Betty Gilpin Biography

Betty Gilpin is an American actress who shot to fame playing Crystal in the thriller "The Hunt" and Debbie "Liberty Belle" Eagan in Netflix's comedy series "GLOW". Her "GLOW" performance earned her three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Gilpin also captivated audiences as Sister Simone, wrestling with AI's power in the sci-fi miniseries "Mrs. Davis" (2023).

Childhood, Youth, Family

Elizabeth Folan Gilpin (the actress's full name) was born in the summer of 1986 to parents John Mitchell Gilpin and Ann McDonough in New York City.

Her paternal great-great-grandfather Lawrence Tyson was a general and politician, while her great-grandfather General William "Billy" Mitchell was a WWI hero who founded the U.S. Air Force. Betty's uncle Drew Gilpin Faust was Harvard University's president for a decade.

Betty's parents worked in the Broadway theater and appeared in films. Her father appeared in about 70 film projects, while her mother was in just over 20. From childhood, Betty was mesmerized by their stage performances. She explained:

When I watched my parents' shows, two actors on stage created something inexplicable between them. It's like falling in love or spending time with a small child – there's this invisible electricity.

The girl and her two younger brothers, Sam and Harry, grew up in a creative atmosphere in the historic port area of Manhattan, South Street Seaport, in a house with a ceiling made from fragments of an old ship. "It felt like our secret little fort," Gilpin recalls.

When Betty turned 9, the family relocated to Roxbury, Connecticut, where her father became an Episcopal priest.

After graduating in 2004, she headed back to New York City to study at Fordham University in Manhattan. Her drama professor was two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest.

Speaking about her education, Betty noted:

We studied a lot of theater of the absurd at Fordham and 'building your inner ocean of weird' was the thesis statement," she said. "Then graduating and auditioning for things like 'Gossip Girl,' where the No. 1 priority is muffling your ocean of weird and curling your hair, I didn't work for a while because I was bad at both the muffling and the curling.

Indeed, she has always taken acting seriously. She became an actress because she was a "strange girl with split ends, sitting somewhere off to the side in a slobber-soaked sweatshirt, making notes about human behavior."

Acting Career

Gilpin's film debut was as Amanda Dockerty in the TV series "Law & Order". She appeared in four episodes, but felt uncomfortable about one where she starred opposite actor Dylan Minnette:

He was a 14-year-old student, and I was his biology teacher, and we had a romance. I want to see him at a Netflix event to ask if he remembers. It was very creepy.

She later landed guest roles on shows like "Fringe", "The Unusuals", and "Medium".

Betty's first breakout role was Dr. Carrie Roman in the dramedy "Nurse Jackie". While Edie Falco carried the show, producers took notice of Gilpin's performance. She played this role for three years.

Betty Gilpin in the series 'Nurse Jackie'

Soon after, she landed one of the lead roles in the wrestling comedy "GLOW" (2017), playing Debbie Eagan (aka Liberty Belle), a free-spirited and vibrant wrestler.

She and the other actresses spent about a month learning to wrestle before filming with WWE's Chavo Guerrero Jr. Betty had never been athletic, not even in school. "At my school, you could do theater as a sport, so I staged 'As You Like It' while everyone else played football. I never had to use my body functionally," Gilpin recalled.

Betty Gilpin in GLOW

The role earned her three Emmy nominations and boosted her confidence, leading to her first starring role in 2019's horror film "The Hunt" - a brutal take on class inequality.

The film sparked public controversy, with Donald Trump calling Hollywood "very bad for our country" over the plot - where human hunters become the hunted.

In 2022, the actress partnered with Julia Roberts, Dan Stevens, and Sean Penn to star in the TV series "Gaslit", which tells the story of the Watergate scandal.

But Gilpin's most compelling role came in 2023. In the sci-fi series "Mrs. Davis", she appeared on screen as the main character - a nun named Simone, who enters an unequal battle with artificial intelligence.

Betty didn't hide her enthusiasm for this character and, echoing her character's AI fears, told interviewers:

I think about the brilliant scripts that Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof wrote along with the writers' room, the themes that they delved into, it really made me think about the church and the internet as two separate things and how it's really us that misuse them – or we create these institutions that go against what they're probably originally designed for. Not being a person of faith myself, but it was probably supposed to be used as asking big questions and wandering and connecting, and probably the internet as well – we could be using it to explore gray areas and get smarter and connect with people. And instead, we're really good at using these separate institutions as wish fulfillment echo chambers instead of these vessels for exploration and existential thought

Personal Life of Betty Gilpin

On the set of "The Northern Kingdom," she met actor Cosmo Pfeil. She was 19 years old and her greatest wish was to become famous. But her "on-screen brother" was patient. His persistent courtship developed into a serious relationship. The actors married in 2016 after years together, and welcomed daughter Mary in 2020.

Betty Gilpin and her husband Cosmo Pfeil

Gilpin fiercely protects her family from outside interference. She doesn't maintain any public social media profiles. Fans can only enjoy the few photos that appear in the media when Betty gives interviews to journalists.

Betty Gilpin Now

In 2023, Betty released her debut book, a collection of essays titled "All the Women in My Brain". It's a memoir, but an unconventional and deeply personal one. She writes about growing up in an acting family, drug-filled school days, and battling depression. She also details her years-long struggle to make it in Hollywood before landing her breakthrough role in "Nurse Jackie". The book also revealed details about her relationship with Cosmo Pfeil and their daughter's birth.

The title refers to Betty's view of her own brain as a "room full of women who take turns at the wheel". The book received favorable reviews from critics.

Betty Gilpin in the series 'Three Women'

Fans eagerly awaited the release of the drama series "Three Women", which was based on Lisa Taddeo's bestselling novel. In it, Betty landed the main role of Liza, a young woman living with an unloved husband. A sudden affair dramatically changes her character's life. On set, Gilpin's co-stars were Shailene Woodley, DeWanda Wise, and Gabrielle Creevy.

Interesting Facts

Growing up, Betty Gilpin had a favorite hobby: people-watching and recording her insights in her diary. This love of writing eventually inspired her to submit essays to Lena Dunham's newsletter and get them published in Glamour magazine. One of these was titled "What It's Like to Have Pea-Sized Confidence with Watermelon-Sized Boobs".

Gilpin is frequently compared to British actress Jodie Comer, who won an Emmy for playing Oksana Astankova (Villanelle) in the hit series "Killing Eve". Her co-star in the movie "Mrs. Davis", Jake McDorman, stated: If you take Lucille Ball and Meryl Streep and put them in a blender, you get Betty Gilpin.