Darren Criss

Darren Everett Criss, born February 5, 1987, in San Francisco, California, is an American actor, singer, and songwriter whose work spans Broadway, television, and recorded music. The youngest child of Charles William Criss, an investment banker and arts patron originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Cerina Criss, a native of Cebu, Philippines, of Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish descent, Criss grew up primarily in San Francisco, with a period from 1988 to 1992 spent in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father founded EastWest Bank and served as its chairman and CEO. His older brother, Charles "Chuck" Criss, later became a member of the band Freelance Whales.

Criss received his early education at Catholic institutions, completing elementary school at Stuart Hall for Boys before graduating from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 2005. His musical training began at age five with classical violin lessons that continued for fifteen years, and he independently learned guitar, piano, mandolin, harmonica, and drums. At St. Ignatius, he served as concertmaster of the school orchestra and fronted his own band. At age ten, he was accepted into the American Conservatory Theater's Young Conservatory program, where he studied theater performance and appeared in productions including A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Voysey Inheritance. He made his professional stage debut that same year, at age ten, playing Cesario in 42nd Street Moon's production of Fanny in 1997, followed by roles in Do I Hear a Waltz? in 1998 and Babes in Arms in 1999. In 2009, Criss earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre performance from the University of Michigan, where he also minored in musicology and Italian and spent a semester in 2008 studying Italian theater at the Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy.

Upon graduating from Michigan, Criss co-founded StarKid Productions, a musical theater company, alongside friends and classmates. He gained early recognition playing the lead role of Harry Potter in StarKid's A Very Potter Musical, for which he also wrote the majority of the music and lyrics. He contributed songs to additional StarKid productions including Me and My Dick, which became the first student-produced college musical to chart on Billboard, debuting at number 11 on the Top Cast Albums chart, and Little White Lie. He solely composed the music for A Very Potter Sequel and Starship, the latter of which reached number one on the Billboard Top Cast Albums chart and number 134 on the Billboard 200. Criss later became a co-owner of StarKid Productions, which is based in Los Angeles.

Criss rose to broader public attention beginning in 2010 through his recurring role as Blaine Anderson on the Fox television series Glee, a part he held from 2010 to 2015. His debut performance on the show, a cover of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream," reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Billboard Digital Songs chart, selling 214,000 copies in its first week and becoming only the second gold single in the series' history. The Dalton Academy Warblers, the glee club Blaine led on the show, generated enough popularity to warrant their own soundtrack album, Glee: The Music Presents the Warblers, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and number one on Billboard's Soundtracks chart.

His Broadway career spans 2011 to 2024. Criss appeared as a replacement in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and later took on the lead role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a replacement. He also starred in American Buffalo. His most recent Broadway credit, Maybe Happy Ending, brought him the most significant recognition of his stage career: at the 2025 Tony Awards, Criss won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for the production, becoming the first Asian American actor to win in that category. He also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a co-producer of Maybe Happy Ending. The production additionally earned Criss a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical in 2025.

On television, Criss starred in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story in 2018, portraying spree killer Andrew Cunanan in the second installment of Ryan Murphy's anthology series. The performance earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. In March 2017, Criss launched the indie pop band Computer Games alongside his brother Chuck. In 2015, he co-founded Elsie Fest, described as New York City's first outdoor music festival dedicated to music from stage and screen.