Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, born October 22, 1975, in Missoula, Montana, is an American actor whose career spans Broadway, television, and film. He was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he began performing at age eight as a member of the Albuquerque Children's Theater for six years. While attending St. Pius X High School, he performed in the musicals Bye Bye Birdie and Li'l Abner, participated on the speech and debate team, and graduated in 1994. He also worked as a dancer and singer at Cliff's Amusement Park during that period. After high school, Ferguson enrolled at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City.

Ferguson made his Broadway debut in On the Town in 1998, launching a stage career that would span more than two decades. Among his most notable early Broadway credits is The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, in which he originated the role of Leaf Coneybear when the production opened on Broadway in 2006. The ensemble cast of that production earned a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in 2005. He also appeared in On the Twentieth Century as part of his Broadway work during this period.

In 2016, Ferguson returned to Broadway in Fully Committed, a solo production for which he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. His Broadway work culminated in a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play in 2022, earned for his performance in the revival of Take Me Out. Ferguson has also been a recurring presence in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park productions, appearing in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2007, A Winter's Tale and The Merchant of Venice in 2010, The Tempest in 2015, and Twelfth Night; or What You Will in 2025.

Beyond the stage, Ferguson is widely recognized for portraying Mitchell Pritchett, an openly gay lawyer, on the ABC sitcom Modern Family from 2009 to 2020. The role earned him five consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Earlier in his television career, he played Richie Velch on the CBS sitcom The Class. He appeared as a judge on So You Think You Can Dance, co-hosted HGTV's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in 2020, and appeared in a 2017 episode of TBS's Drop the Mic. In film, he had a role in the 2008 thriller Untraceable. In 2018, he was among the actors who voiced the audiobook A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, and in 2019 he appeared in Taylor Swift's music video for "You Need to Calm Down."

In March 2012, Ferguson appeared as Dr. Ilan Meyer in a staged reading of Dustin Lance Black's play 8, a reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Proposition 8, held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights. That same year, Ferguson and his lawyer Justin Mikita announced their engagement and co-founded the non-profit organization Tie The Knot, which raises funds in support of same-sex marriage through the sale of limited-edition bow ties. The couple married in Manhattan on July 20, 2013, with playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner officiating. They have two sons born through surrogacy, the first on July 7, 2020, and the second on November 15, 2022.

In January 2013, Ferguson and Mikita were recruited by Illinois Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon to lobby legislators in support of SB10, a bill permitting same-sex marriage that subsequently passed both legislative houses and was signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn, taking effect on June 1, 2014. In October 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union named Ferguson its celebrity ambassador for the LGBT community, and the Tie The Knot foundation made a grant of $10,000 to the ACLU of New Mexico in connection with same-sex marriage efforts in that state. Ferguson uses his full name professionally because another actor named Jesse Ferguson was already registered with the actors' union when he joined. He has a dog named Leaf, after the character he originated in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.