Anna Gunn (born August 11, 1968) is an American actress. She is known for playing Martha Bullock on the HBO Western series Deadwood (2004–2006) and Skyler White on the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008–2013). Her accolades include two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Gunn has starred on the ABC series The Practice (1997–2002) and the Fox series Gracepoint (2014). Her film roles include the action thriller Enemy of the State (1998), the independent thriller Red State (2011), the docudrama Little Red Wagon (2012), the financial thriller Equity (2016), the biographical drama Sully (2016), the comedy drama Being Frank (2018), and the Deadwood sequel film Deadwood: The Movie (2019). She also voiced Ariel in the Legacy of Kain video game series (1996–2003).

Early life and education

Gunn grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is descended from William Rufus Day, who was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She is of Polish, Slovak, English, German and distant Irish and Dutch descent. She graduated from Santa Fe Preparatory School in 1986, then attended Northwestern University, where she majored in theater and graduated in 1990. In the fall of 1988, she spent a semester abroad to study at the British American Drama Academy. She moved to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, where she shared a house with Pamela Adlon.

Career

Gunn's first screen credit was the Quantum Leap episode "The Play's the Thing". She had a recurring role as Assistant District Attorney Jean Ward on the ABC series The Practice from 1997 to 2002, and was series regular as Martha Bullock on HBO's Deadwood from 2005 to 2006. She appeared on Seinfeld in the episode "The Glasses", in the Six Feet Under episode "Parallel Play", and on the first season of Murder One. She also provided the voice of Ariel in the Legacy of Kain series of video games. Gunn starred as Skyler White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2012, 2013 and 2014, winning in 2013 and 2014. In August 2013, she wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times examining the public dislike directed toward her character. In 2011, Gunn had a lead role in the Lifetime film Secrets of Eden, opposite John Stamos. Her other film credits include Without Evidence, Enemy of the State, Treading Water, and Red State. In February 2013, cable network Bravo announced that Gunn would star in a pilot for a one-hour TV drama, Rita, based on a Danish TV series about a private-school teacher and mother. The Fox TV Studios pilot was to be written by Krista Vernoff and directed by Miguel Arteta. In 2014, Gunn starred Off-Broadway with Billy Magnussen in Sex with Strangers, directed by David Schwimmer at Second Stage Theater. Gunn starred in the 2016 film Equity. Billed as the first female-driven Wall Street film, it premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. That same year, she starred in Clint Eastwood's biographical drama film Sully. In 2019, Gunn starred as Maxine Faulk in the Noël Coward Theater limited-time production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana.

Personal life

Gunn married Scottish actor and real estate broker Alastair Duncan in 1990. They divorced in 2009. They have two daughters, Eila Rose and Emma.

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

Awards and nominations