RAMONA ROSALES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. HAIR: CERVANO MALDONADO @THE WALL GROUP. MAKE-UP: KAYLEEN MCADAMS @STARWORKS GROUP. STYLING: KARLA WELCH @THE WALL GROUP. DRESS BY KATE SPADE. WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO THE HOLLYWOOD ROOSEVELT HOTEL

Before she was Peggy Olson, the trailblazing secretary who makes it all the way to chief copywriter in Mad Men — and long before she became Offred, the subversive insider in The Handmaid’s Tale — Elisabeth Moss’s breakout role was in The West Wing. Aged 17, she played Zoey, the president’s non-conformist daughter. There has to be something special about a woman who has starred in fiery female roles in not just one but three era-defining series of television’s golden age.

I’m waiting for Moss in a hotel bar in Beverley Hills, wondering if she will be the intelligent, sensitive feminist hero of her on-screen characters. She is mesmeric in The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s vision of a dystopian future in which women