Early life
Messing was innate into the Jewish family in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Once she was trio she moved sustaining her parents & her older brother, Brett, to the quietly town outside Providence, Rhode Island. Her father, Brian Messing, occurs as sales executive for the jewellery manufacturer; her mother, Sandy Messing, has worked as a professional singer, banker, travel professional, & realty agent.

As a child Messing took lessons around dance, singing, & acting. When Messing's parents encouraged her dream of becoming an actress, it besides urged her for the liberal arts educatiin before deciding on acting as a career. Heeding their advice, she attended Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. In a period of her junior season she exposed theater at the prestigious British European Studio Group of London program, around England, an experience that fueled her want to work.

Fallowing graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis in 1990, with the bachelor's degree in theater arts, Messing gained admission to the elite Graduate Acting Program at New York University (NYU), which accepts only about 15 new students annually. 3 years late she earned a master's degree in fine arts from NYU.

Career
Late inside 1993, Messing won praise for her acting in the pre-Broadway workshop production of Tony Kushner's much-lauded play Angels in America: Perestroika. Soon, she broke into television by appearing on the award-winning series NYPD Blue, playing a a share of Dana Abandando—a conniving sister of one of a indicate's independent characters. People installments aired inside late 1994 and early 1995.

Around 1995, Messing made her film debut with the little role around A Walk in the Clouds, a love story directed by Alfonso Arau. She appeared when the married woman of a World War II veteran played by Keanu Reeves. This exposure led a Fox network to make her a co-star of the television sitcom Ned and Stacey. the series, just about the young human & the miss world health organization marry for reasons differently love fallowing caring every more for single a week, lasted for 2 seasons (1995–1997).

when much as a equivalent period, Messing appeared as Jerry Seinfeld's date in 2 episodes of the hit television indicate Seinfeld: "The Wait Out" around 1996, and "The Yada Yada" around 1997. the actress turned down a star role inside another television sitcom to come out in Donald Margulies's two-character play Collected Stories, which opened at the Off-Broadway Manhattan Theater Club in 1997. Messing portrayed the protégé &, finally, literary betrayer of a notable short-story writer (Maria Tucci).

Within 1998 Messing had a lead role when the bioanthropologist Sloan Parker on ABC's dramatic science-fiction television series Prey. Meanwhile, Messing's professional experienced approached a actress by owning a pilot script for the television indicate Might & Grace, Messing was inclined to take some time off, but the pilot for Will & Grace intrigued her.

Messing was hand-picked by Woody Allen for a little role inside his 1998 picture show Celebrity. Inside an locate late, Messing described a method Allen utilized to enable her to discover a essence of her character, 1 that resulted inside nerve-stressful uncertainty for the actress, world health organization when you took her number 1 4 years on the placed had there is no feedback from either Allen. When he offered his foremost words of counsel, on the fifth day, Messing felt herself undergoing the transformation.

Messing's heavy-screen roles as well include turns as a pleasantly married however ill-ill-starred married woman in the supernatural thriller The Mothman Prophecies (2002), which also starred Richard Gere.

Messing met her new married man Daniel Zelman, an actor & film writer, in their number 1 day when grad student at NYU. She & Zelman, world health organization were married on September 3, 2000, live in Los Angeles, California.