Emily Bergl Biography

Emily Bergl is one of a few young actresses today who has managed to create a substantial career in film, television, and the theatre. Her work already includes diverse roles in comedy and drama, and characters from many different centuries. She has worked with award-winning directors on film and television including James Mangold, Antoine Fuqua, Steven Shainberg, and Jonathan Kaplan, and on stage with Doug Hughes, Daniel Sullivan, Michael Greif, Michael Mayer, and Mark Brokaw.
Emily was born in Milton Keynes, England to a British father and Irish mother. The family moved to the States when she was six, eventually settling in Chicago. Emily soon began acting in local theatre productions, all of which she produced, directed, designed and catered in her backyard. The reviews, also written by Emily, were glowing. After she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Grinnell College, Emily quickly moved to New York to pursue a stage career, where she lived in a studio apartment above a strip club along with another actor and a tap dancer. She supported herself by understudying on Broadway in the evening, and then working the graveyard shift at various law firms. After only a few months, she was chosen from a nationwide casting call to play the lead in "The Rage: Carrie 2," her first job on camera. The film earned rave reviews for the novice film actress' performance, and lead to starring roles in independent films such as "Happy Campers" and "Chasing Sleep," opposite Jeff Daniels.
Emily soon returned to the theatre, starring in "Romeo and Juliet" at the Old Globe, and on Broadway in "The Lion in Winter" opposite Laurence Fishburne and Stockard Channing, for which she won the FANY award for Best Broadway Debut. Many guest star roles on television soon followed, including "ER," "NYPD Blue," "Providence," "CSI: Miami," "Star Trek Enterprise," "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" and two seasons as the malevolent Francie on "Gilmore Girls." Emily also starred in "Steven Spielberg Presents Taken," a historic 20-hour mini-series, as Lisa, the mother to Dakota Fanning.
While maintaining a career in film and television, Emily has worked throughout the country at regional theatres such as the Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Stage and Film, South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, and The Globe Theatres, playing lead roles in "Proof" and "Our Town." She starred on Broadway in "The Rivals" at Lincoln Center (a performance the New York Times described as "infinitely nuanced"), and originated roles off-Broadway in new plays by Christopher Shinn and Steven Dietz. Emily is also a company member of Antaeus, a theatre company in Los Angeles that produces classic works.
This past year Emily returned to Broadway to star opposite Gabriel Byrne in Eugene O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet." In the fall she can be seen in the Diane Arbus biopic "Fur," opposite Nicole Kidman. She will also appear as 'Annie' on the ABC series "Men in Trees," a comedy starring Anne Heche as a relationship expert who moves to Alaska. During the summer, Emily traveled to Alaska to research the show, which she is documenting on TVguide.com. Emily spends her free time volunteering for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.