Gretchen Mol (born November 8, 1972) is an American actress and former model. She is known for her roles in films like Rounders, Celebrity, 3:10 to Yuma or The Notorious Bettie Page, where she played the title character. She was recently seen as Gillian Darmody in HBO's Boardwalk Empire.
In 1998, she appeared in several notable films including Rounders, starring Matt Damon and Woody Allen's Celebrity opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. It was in 1998 that she also came to prominence and notoriety when she was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Her appearance was both a triumph and a failure — it brought her great attention, but her movies bombed. Dubbed the "It Girl of the Nineties" by the magazine, her career did not live up to the hype – her early success was not sustained and she faced several lean years before a notable comeback with The Notorious Bettie Page in 2006.
While major roles have been sporadic, Mol has been in more than 30 feature films. She made her film debut in Spike Lee's 1996 film, Girl 6. She said "I was auditioning for Guiding Light and I was happy I got a Spike Lee movie, which was a tiny part, but all of a sudden I had Spike Lee on my resume. I didn't audition for day player anymore".
After Girl 6, New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara took notice and cast her in two movies, The Funeral (1996) and New Rose Hotel (1998). She had a small role in Donnie Brasco (1998). But by now, she was being typecast as "the girlfriend," which she attempted to change by taking a role opposite Jude Law in Music From Another Room (1998), a romantic comedy. Unfortunately, the film went virtually unnoticed by critics and audiences.
For her second film with Woody Allen, 1999's Sweet and Lowdown, she played a minor role which the Greenwich Village Gazette called "notable". She played the female lead role in the 1999 film The Thirteenth Floor. She played the victim of a con artist in the 2003 film, Heavy Put-Away, based on the Terry Southern story. In 2006, she shared the lead in a romantic comedy, Puccini for Beginners, in which her character has a lesbian affair.
Mol worked with Mary Harron for two years as the director struggled to finance The Notorious Bettie Page: "I kind of felt like I lived with it for a while; certainly not as long as Mary Harron did but I got a good chance to really feel like I knew something about Bettie so by the time the role was mine and I was on set I was pretty confident. I felt like I really worked for it."
The next year, 2007, was one of her busiest, with four films in production or in release, including a remake of 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe, and An American Affair, in which her character, Catherine Caswell, has an affair with John F. Kennedy. When released in February 2009, the film was harshly criticized by New York Times critic Stephen Holden, though he said that Mol's part was "quite well acted".
In April 2008, she began filming Tenure in Philadelphia, working opposite Luke Wilson, and Andrew Daly. Though it had received some good reviews after being screened at several film festivals, it was released direct-to-video in February 2010.
By Posted on