Carrie-Anne Moss was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, as youngest of two children of Barbara and Melvyn Moss. At age 20, she moved to Europe to pursue a career in modeling; in Spain she was cast in a regular role in the TV show Dark Justice (1991), which was produced in Barcelona for its first season, and she followed it to the shooting locations in Los Angeles the next year. Later she appeared in numerous commercials and TV series, including Matrix (1993), which coincidentally presaged the movie that would make her famous, as well as Models Inc. (1994) and F/X: The Series (1996).
Moss got an unexpected and high-profile breakthrough when she was cast as the character Trinity in Matrix (1999) opposite Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.
Her imposing, sympathetic, and athletic performance in the alternate-world, science-fiction action film immediately thrust her into the spotlight and brought her roles in a number of mainstream Hollywood films, including mob comedy The Crew (2000), sci-fi thriller Red Planet (2000), and serial killer drama Suspect Zero (2004). Although she also appeared in the subsequent Matrix sequels The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) (and provided the voices for the video games inspired by the films), Moss cultivated a rich and varied career in independent films.
She played an unhappily-married housewife in the Oscar-nominated drama Chocolat (2000), and starred opposite Guy Pearce in Christopher Nolan's backwards-told thriller Memento (2000), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other notable indie films included The Chumscrubber (2005), Mini's First Time (2006), Snow Cake (2006), and Fireflies in the Garden (2008).
Moss later appeared as Shia LaBeouf's mother in the surprise box office hit Disturbia (2007) and co-starred in the direct-to-DVD thriller Unthinkable (2010) before undertaking a successful guest-star run on the NBC action comedy Chuck (2007). Most recently, she returned to the world of alternate realities with the horror film Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012).
Moss married actor Steven Roy in 1999, and the couple have two sons and a daughter.
