Chris Messina Won't Let His Sons Get Into Show Business Until They’re 18

You might recognize him best from The Mindy Project as Dr. Danny Castellano, Mindy Lahiri’s love interest and father to her son Leo. But Chris Messina has sort of been everywhere on screen for the past two decades. Even more so in recent years with his roles in the movie Air, Peacock’s new comedy thriller Based on a True Story, and Stephen King’s The Boogeyman, where he plays a grieving therapist and dad to two girls. Another role as a dad for Messina, who is quite familiar with the ins and outs in his own life as a father of two sons. Here’s what else you need to know about Messina’s wife and kids.

Chris Messina has been with his wife, producer Jennifer Todd, for years.

Messina is one of those actors who keeps his private life very, very private. To the point that he does not have any public social media accounts, and rarely discloses too much information about his family. Still, that does not stop family friends and co-stars like Rashida Jones from raving about his relationship with Todd, a well-known producer who has worked on all three Austin Powers movies. In 2011, Jones told Entertainment Tonight that she didn’t plan on getting married because she saw Messina and Todd as such an inspiring couple. “Chris Messina, who is my costar in this movie, is with my very close friend [producer Jennifer Todd]. They’re not married, but they have two kids and they’re wildly happy. It doesn’t buy you anything. It just buys you a really big sh*tty pageant of a wedding to make other people happy.”

Apparently things did change slightly for Todd and Messina as the actor told Indiewire in 2014 that he “lives in Los Angeles with my wife Jennifer Todd who is a film producer and our two boys, Milo and Giovanni.”

Their first child, Milo Montgomery, was born in 2008.

Messina and Todd welcomed their oldest son, Milo Montgomery, in 2008. The proud dad hit the ground running as an actor and a dad, telling Glamour in 2015 that he wanted to introduce his sons to good movies from jump. “I . . . always talk to them and say things like, 'So that's Al Pacino! He's a great actor! You're going to love him when you get older!’” he explained at the time. “I talk about Brando to them. And they sit there thinking, 'What is he talking about?' It's so funny.”

Their second child, son Giovanni, was born in 2009.

Just one year after Milo was born, he became a big brother to Giovanni Messina. And once he became a dad of two, Messina told Glamour that he was looking ahead to acting gigs. “My wife is a producer, so we talk about movies a lot, but they'll have to wait till they are 18 to pursue anything in it, if they are even interested,” Messina told Glamour. “School plays are fine though, otherwise that's about it.”

Chris Messina and his family sound like quite the creative family. I guess we’ll have to wait a few years to see if Milo and Giovanni make it on the big screen like their dad.