Emmy Rossum

Emmanuelle Grey "Emmy" Rossum (born September 12, 1986) is an American actress and singer. Raised in New York City by her single mother, a corporate photographer, Rossum displayed early musical talent, performing with the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus by age seven. Her acting career began with on-screen appearances in the late 1990s, including a debut role that earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance in Songcatcher (2000), where she portrayed an Appalachian orphan. Rossum gained prominence as Christine Daaé in the 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and a Young Artist Award. She achieved further recognition starring as Fiona Gallagher, the eldest sibling in a dysfunctional family, in the Showtime series Shameless from 2011 to 2018, appearing in 110 episodes across nine seasons. Beyond acting, Rossum has pursued singing, releasing the album Inside Out in 2007, and later transitioned into directing and producing, including episodes of Shameless and forming her own production company. In 2017, she married director Sam Esmail, with whom she has a daughter born in 2021.

Emmanuelle Grey Rossum was born on September 12, 1986, in New York City, as the only child of Cheryl Rossum, a single mother employed as a corporate photographer. Her parents separated while her mother was pregnant, and Rossum has met her father, who is of English and Dutch Protestant ancestry, only twice as of 2007, reflecting a profound estrangement that left her without paternal involvement in her upbringing.

Raised primarily by her mother in a secular Jewish household—her mother being of Russian Jewish descent—Rossum was instilled with a "Jewish code of ethics and morals" from an early age, though she identifies with the faith amid limited Orthodox familial ties. The family dynamics emphasized self-reliance, as Cheryl Rossum supported them without evident financial privilege, fostering an environment where Rossum navigated childhood independently amid her mother's professional demands.

Rossum attended the Spence School, a private all-girls institution in Manhattan, for several years, but ultimately dropped out to accommodate emerging opportunities, completing her high school education online instead. This shift underscored the pragmatic adaptations in her formative years, shaped by a maternal-led household devoid of traditional two-parent stability and marked by the emotional challenges of paternal absence, which Rossum has described as a source of personal pain.