As a child Keri Russell wanted to be something other than an actor.
Can you guess what?
Also, what did all of her characters have in common during a stretch in the mid-2000s?
There's plenty to the backstory of this star of Felicity and The Americans.
It's hard to believe that someone with Keri Russell's career originally didn't want to
be an actress, but that's the truth.
She grew up in Arizona, and later Colorado, as her family moved around a lot because of
her father's job as a Nissan executive.
Young Keri did have dreams of performing, but her heart was set on dancing rather than
acting.
When she was 13, she even earned a scholarship to a dance school, and her career was set
into motion.
As she recalled during a 2020 interview on Off Camera with Sam Jones,
"I didn't grow up desperate to be an actress [...] I was a dancer.
That's kind of, like, the only thing I'm trained in."
Dancing would prove to be Russell's ticket to stardom, just not in the way that she expected,
as all those lessons and hard work would pay off in the form of an audition for The Mickey
Mouse Club.
The Disney casting agent asked her to dance and sing; the first part was fine, but she
didn't want to belt out a tune, and she said as much.
In the end, though, it wasn't a problem, as she was a Mouseketeer from 1991 to 1994.
Russell was a fair bit older than most of the other kids, which she mentioned during
a 2015 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
"I like to remind everyone that they were 12 when I was 17, so I was like, I could drive."
"Wow."
"You know what I mean?"
On The WB drama series Felicity, Russell played the title character, a young woman who goes
to college in New York City so that she can be close to her crush, Ben, who hasn't shown
any interest in her.
The show was a major hit for the network, and teenage girls found themselves heavily
invested in the life of Felicity, who must ultimately choose either Ben or Noel, a resident
assistant she meets as she starts her new collegiate life.
The show ran for four seasons from 1998 to 2002, and it was popular right out of the
gate.
It even earned two Golden Globe nominations for its first season: Best Drama Series and
Best Actress.
A shocked Russell, who was just 22 at the time, won the latter trophy, beating out such
big names as Gillian Anderson of The X-Files and Julianna Margulies of ER.
During her acceptance speech, she thanked creator J.J.
Abrams for casting her, and also declared,
"This is so ... encouraging is the word that comes to mind, more than thanks."
To understand just how big a deal Felicity was, one need look no further than the Great
Haircut Drama of 1999.
Heading into the show's second season, Russell and J.J.
Abrams decided that the actress should cut her hair, in keeping with her character's
heartbreak storyline.
You might think such a decision would be no big deal.
But you would be very, very wrong.
When Russell's long locks were chopped down to a pixie cut, people absolutely flipped
out.
And not just teen fans, but grown adults as well.
Negative complaints flowed in, and ratings for the show plummeted.
Susanne Daniels, then head of programming at The WB, even announced a ban on the network's
actors cutting their hair.
Russell took the blame, and she even had to endure people approaching her on the street
to complain or tell her that she was pretty before she cut her hair.
But she never had any regrets, as she's always maintained that it was the right move for
the character and herself.
As she put it,
"That long hair is how I was identified.
So, it was nice to be out of that."
"I don't think it's so bad.
I just think it's a different look, kind of like a new me."
"Guys are gonna hate it."
After Felicity wrapped, Russell took a page out of her character's playbook and headed
to New York.
But it wasn't because of a man.
She was, to put it simply, burnt out.
So she took a couple of years off to get away from the pressures of fame, and she also wasn't
even sure she wanted to continue acting.
Unburdened by worrying about her career, she made the important decision to put her mental
health first.
When Russell was finally ready to resume working, she didn't jump back into TV, as she instead
decided to try her luck on the stage.
In 2004, she starred alongside Jeremy Piven in an off-Broadway performance of Neil LaBute's
drama Fat Pig.
The reviews of Russell's performance were mostly positive.
Her character, Jeannie, was cruel, the complete opposite of the good girl persona she embodied
on Felicity.
The actress was happy to shake off the typecasting.
As she put it to New York Magazine,
"Who knew it was so fun to be mean?
I'd been missing out all this time!"
In 2006, Keri Russell became a spokeswoman for CoverGirl cosmetics, her first big modeling
gig.
As she recalled during an interview with CBS,
"When I first started, I did do a commercial for a deodorant or something.
I don't even think it aired.
This is the first thing I've done like this."
Russell was hired to promote the new Outlast Double LipShine, and the creative team definitely
came up with a creative way for her to do so.
Perhaps in an attempt to play off her role in 2006's Mission: Impossible III, she faces
off against a group of attackers in a commercial for the campaign.
Needless to say, her lipstick remains flawless throughout the fight.
This gig went beyond the usual TV and magazine ads, as Russell also filmed "The Keri Kronicles,"
a reality show for MySpace that purported to offer a look into her life.
Sadly, it appears to have since been wiped from the Internet.
After her performances in Fat Pig and Mission: Impossible III, Russell was really showing
off her acting range to audiences.
But she still had to endure being typecast.
But she wasn't an innocent teen anymore.
No, at this point in her career, she played a pregnant woman in four films in a row.
As she quipped to The Hollywood Reporter in 2018,
"I think there's something about my face that screams, 'Nice pregnant girl.'"
In two of the films, 2005's The Magic of Ordinary Days and 2007's August Rush, Russell played
unwed mothers-to-be, whose circumstances lead to plenty of drama.
In 2007's The Girl in the Park, she played another unmarried pregnant woman, although
this time around her character was engaged.
And in Waitress, also released in 2007, her expectant character Jenna is married, but
her relationship with her deadbeat, controlling husband appear to be on the rocks.
"I haven't loved you for years.
I want a divorce."
Jenna vents her frustrations into delicious pies that she bakes for the diner in her small
town, as she gives the desserts colorful names like "I Hate My Husband Pie."
Of all those movies, Waitress was the biggest success.
The joyful story touched viewers and was even eventually adapted into a hit Broadway musical.
As fate would have it, as Russell was promoting Waitress, she herself was also pregnant, as
she gave birth to her son River in June 2007.
Earlier that year on Valentine's Day, she wed River's father, Shane Deary, but the marriage
wouldn't last forever.
The couple later welcomed a daughter named Willa, but then they separated in the summer
of 2012.
Russell had originally met Shane, a carpenter, through friends in Massachusetts' Martha's
Vineyard.
Their small wedding took place during a snowstorm in New York while Russell was in her second
trimester.
The relationship would last for 7 years.
Upon news of their separation, the actress' rep issued a statement to E! News that noted,
"The separation is amicable and their focus is on their children."
Since then, Russell has remained pretty quiet about this particular episode in her private
life.
If Keri Russell had any final remnants of Felicity's persona attached to her, she obliterated
them once and for all when she started playing Elizabeth Jennings on FX's The Americans.
Debuting in 2013, the period drama followed the lives of a seemingly all-American couple
with two children who are actually Russian KGB spies living deep undercover in the United
States during the Cold War.
The idea was inspired by a real-life case, though the show was completely fictional.
The Americans ran for six seasons, and it featured a range of tones, including dark,
sad, sexy, and violent.
And most importantly, it was beloved by critics and audiences alike.
At the center of all the action was Elizabeth, who was emotionally detached from the killings
and other underhanded dealings that her job required.
The role garnered Russell three Emmy nominations, though she always went home empty-handed.
Nevertheless, it was the role of a lifetime for her.
As she told Vanity Fair in 2018,
"I rebelled in her, kind of, panther-like sub-fearlessness [...] She's not afraid to
look everyone in the eye and live in the uncomfortable, weird silences."
The Americans wasn't special for Russell just because of the acting opportunity it offered,
but also because she got to work alongside Matthew Rhys, who played her onscreen husband.
The two eventually started dating in real life, but the cutest part of their love story
is that they actually originally met years earlier.
As they revealed on an episode of Watch What Happens Live, Rhys approached Russell for
her number after a kickball party and later left her a drunken message.
She never called back, at least not right away.
After months of rumors, they confirmed their relationship in 2014.
"Did it rekindle when you were making The Americans?"
"Well … yes.
Took a while."
If you watch any clips of these two together, their chemistry is palpable, as they're constantly
making each other smile and laugh.
When Rhys won an Emmy in 2018, he said that if he proposed to Russell, she would punch
him, and her hilarious reaction went viral.
Reportedly, the spark between the two was plenty apparent on the Americans set.
The show featured an abundance of sex scenes, and when Russell and Rhys were about to film
one particularly steamy encounter, the director was concerned about how it would go.
As Russell recalled in an interview,
"We kind of did it and just did it right away.
And [the director] told the script supervisor, 'These two have definitely f---ed.'
He’s like, 'they’re way too comfortable together.'"
In May 2020, Russell and Rhys welcomed their first child together, a son named Sam, making
the actress a mother of three.
When it comes to balancing motherhood and maintaining her career, she's clear about
which one is the top priority, as she carefully selects jobs that allow her to be present
with her family.
As she told Town & Country in 2019,
"I see a lot of other people who have great ambition, but I feel as if my life is so full,
with little kids.
I'm not hungry for a certain kind of success."
Russell is frank about the difficulties of parenting, and the ways it's affected her.
As she admitted to People Magazine in 2017, having kids has made her more emotional and
"vulnerable."
And as she put it to Parade Magazine, her children have made her "less selfish" and
more grounded.
It's also understandably changed her relationship with Rhys.
As she explained during a 2018 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the two used
to spend breaks on press tours making out in bathrooms.
Now they ask their driver to pull over so that they can nap before the next interview.
"What has our life come to?!
A nap?!"
As for the process of getting older, Russell appears to be taking it all in stride.
She told Shape in 2020,
"When I see those people who look so great for their age, I'm like, 'Oh, I do want that.
I do want to look like that at 60.'
I'm just not ready to stick to a strict regimen."
Still, her years on The Americans and all her other action roles have dictated that
she stay in fighting form, and she's admitted that she's "definitely a physical person."
Altogether, she's had plenty of success along the way, and it sounds like Keri Russell is
ready to handle whatever her next chapter has in store for her!
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