Jessica Hecht (born June 28, 1965) is an American actress known for her roles as Gretchen Schwartz on Breaking Bad, Susan Bunch on Friends, Carol Mannheim on The Boys, and Karen on Special, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. She is also known for her work on Broadway, earning Tony Award nominations for her roles in A View from the Bridge (2010), Summer, 1976 (2023), and Eureka Day (2025).
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Early life and education
Hecht was born in Princeton, New Jersey. When she was three, she moved with her parents and sister to Bloomfield, Connecticut. After her parents divorced, her mother married psychiatrist Howard Iger, and they raised Jessica and her sisters Elizabeth and Andrea, and her brother, Russell. Hecht attended Connecticut College for a year and a half before graduating from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 1987 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama.
Hecht was raised in a culturally Jewish family, with a secular socialist father, but nonetheless expressed interest in religion and had a bat mitzvah. She has stated that she is Reconstructionist Jewish and "fairly spiritual".
