Aaron Lazar

Aaron Lazar is an American actor, singer, and entrepreneur born on June 21, 1976, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He attended Cherry Hill High School West, where he participated in musicals and competed in track and field as a discus and javelin thrower. Lazar went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Duke University, completing prerequisite coursework for medical school and taking the MCAT during his time there. He subsequently enrolled at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he earned an MFA in musical theater. He is Jewish and celebrated a Bar Mitzvah.

Lazar's Broadway career spans 1988 to 2018 and encompasses eleven Broadway and national tour credits. His roles include Enjolras in Les Misérables, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical; Arthur in The Last Ship; Ben in Impressionism; Dewhurst and understudy Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel; Sam in Mamma Mia; Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm in A Little Night Music; Larry Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen; Charles in A Tale of Two Cities; Fabrizio in The Light in the Piazza; Joe and understudy Curly in Oklahoma; and understudy Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera. Beyond Broadway, Lazar has accumulated more than forty professional productions since beginning to perform at age nine. Regional and concert credits include Lt. Joseph Cable in South Pacific at the Hollywood Bowl in 2007, Franklin Shepard in a 2016 Los Angeles production of Merrily We Roll Along, Paul in the 2011 New York Philharmonic concert version of Company, Gleb in a 2012 workshop of Anastasia, Bruce in Fun Home at TheaterWorks Hartford, and Dr. Neville Craven in a pre-Broadway regional tryout of The Secret Garden at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. He has also appeared in A New Brain and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at New York City Center Encores.

In addition to his stage work, Lazar has appeared in more than twenty television productions, including the role of Reverend Paul Thomas on Fox's Filthy Rich. His film credits include The Wolf of Wall Street, This Is Where I Leave You, J. Edgar, and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

As a concert artist, Lazar has performed as both a guest artist and soloist with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the NYPops at Carnegie Hall, and ensembles at the Kennedy Center and Masada. His one-man shows include Broadway to Hollywood and All For You, the latter featuring Tony nominee Kate Baldwin, maestro Luke Frazier, and members of the American Pops Orchestra. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he produced Broadway Lullabies, an album featuring Broadway performers and parents presenting reimagined Broadway classics. In August 2024, Lazar released the album Impossible Dream, which includes a title-track cover recorded in a We Are the World style with soloists including Josh Groban, Sting, Kristin Chenoweth, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Norm Lewis, Loren Allred, Leslie Odom Jr., Neil Patrick Harris, and a posthumous contribution from Rebecca Luker. The album received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Classical Compendium in November 2024.

Lazar married LeAnn Garris, a Ford Models model, in 2004 at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in Wilmington, North Carolina. The couple had two sons together and divorced in 2018. In January 2024, Lazar publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis two years prior.