Emmy Award winner DEBRA MESSING (Lisa Kramer) can currently be seen in NBC’s award-winning Will & Grace, which is currently in its sixth season. Messing stars as Grace Adler, an interior designer whose best friend and soul mate is gay. Messing has earned one Emmy Award for Best Actress and three nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, one SAG nomination and two American Comedy Award nominations for her portrayal of Grace on the groundbreaking sitcom.
Messing has been juggling both feature films and a successful television show for several years now. She recently completed shooting the lead role in the romantic comedy entitled Something Borrowed, which will be released next year. In the film, Messing portrays Kat Ellis, a woman who hires a male escort (portrayed by Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her to a wedding in London so she can face her ex-fiancée, who happens to be the best man. She also lent her voice talents to play Arlene in the animated release Garfield: The Movie, along with Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield. The movie will be released in June, 2004.
Most recently, Messing co-starred in Woody Allen’s comedy, Hollywood Ending, opposite Woody Allen and Téa Leoni, and in The Mothman Prophecies, opposite Richard Gere, in which she portrayed his wife. Additional film credits include: Alfonso Arau’s romantic love story, A Walk in the Clouds; and Woody Allen’s Celebrity.
Her television credits include the four-hour CBS mini-series, Jesus; the ABC thriller, Prey; the Fox comedy, Ned & Stacey; NYPD Blue; and Seinfeld.
Messing received her liberal arts education at Brandeis University, where she majored in theatre arts. She spent half of her junior year studying in London’s prestigious B.E.S.G.L. program, which featured dramatic arts teachers recruited from various distinguished institutions such as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Cambridge University and Oxford University.
Upon graduating Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University, she was accepted into N.Y.U.’s elite graduate acting program and received her M.F.A. three years later.
Messing garnered much excitement in New York over her portrayal of Harper Pitt in the pre-Broadway workshop of Tony Kushner’s Tony Award-winning play Angels in America: Perestroika. She then left New York for Seattle to star as Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Intiman Theatre. Upon returning, she was cast as both Mary Louise Parker’s and Polly Draper’s understudy in the New York premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s critically acclaimed off-Broadway play Four Dogs and a Bone at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Messing went on to co-star in Paul Rudnick’s off- Broadway play, The Naked Truth.
Messing co-starred with Maria Tucci in the highly acclaimed, two-woman, off- Broadway production of Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, which premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club and was chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
During her free time she supports charities such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Project Angel Food and various breast cancer charities.
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