Chrissy Metz

Before This Is Us made her a household name, Metz was putting in the kind of unglamorous early-career work most actors know well — guest spots on My Name Is Earl, Entourage, and similar shows where you're lucky to get three scenes (Wikipedia). The role that started to shift things was her appearance in American Horror Story: Freak Show in 2014, which gave her something meatier to work with and put her in front of a much larger audience. Then came Kate Pearson. NBC's This Is Us premiered in 2016 and became one of the most-watched dramas on American network television, and Metz was at the center of it for six full seasons. The show ran through 2022, and her performance earned a Primetime Emmy nomination and two Golden Globe nominations — plus two SAG Awards for ensemble performance alongside the full cast (Wikipedia). Hard to overstate how much that run meant for her profile. The role wasn't just a career break; it was the kind of sustained, long-form character work that lets an actor actually demonstrate range across years, not just episodes. Since wrapping This Is Us, Metz has leaned into projects that let her combine acting with her music. For the 2019 faith-based drama Breakthrough, she performed "I'm Standing With You," which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song — a genuinely rare crossover moment for a TV actress. The Netflix teen comedy Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018) showed she could work in lighter fare, too. Her 2025 Netflix project Faith in the Flames: The Nichole Jolly Story went further, with Metz writing and performing the original song "Last Day in Paradise" for the film (TMDB). Two more projects are on the horizon: the Apple+ thriller Nocturne and Netflix's Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger, both expected in 2026. She's also appeared in The Last O.G. and served as a guest panelist on The Masked Singer in seasons 5 and 11 — the kind of pop-culture cameo that keeps you visible between bigger projects.