Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Drew Groff, born on March 26, 1985, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is an American actor and singer whose career has spanned Broadway, television, and film. Raised in a Mennonite family, he is the son of Julie and Jim Groff, a standardbred horse trainer and driver, and has one older brother, David. His interest in performance began in early childhood, and he has cited Julie Andrews' portrayal of Mary Poppins as a formative influence. As a young aspiring actor, he regularly waited at the stage door after performances by Sutton Foster, whom he credits as one of his greatest influences. Groff participated in drama programs throughout middle and high school and took part in numerous community productions in Lancaster, including performances at the Fulton Opera House in shows such as The Sound of Music, Ragtime, Evita, My Fair Lady, Peter Pan, The Pirates of Penzance, and Rags. He also played Edgar in Bat Boy: The Musical and Ugly in Honk! at The Ephrata Performing Arts Center. At seventeen, he directed and starred in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown at a high school theatre festival at the Fulton Opera House, earning a community award for the production.

Groff graduated from Conestoga Valley High School in 2003 and had been admitted to Carnegie Mellon University, but deferred enrollment after being cast as Rolf in a non-Equity national tour of The Sound of Music. Following the tour, he chose to relocate to New York City and pursue a professional career rather than attend college. He initially supported himself waiting tables at the Chelsea Grill before earning his Actors' Equity Association card in 2005 playing Nick Piazza in Fame at the North Shore Music Theatre. That same year, he made his Broadway debut in Joseph Brooks' musical In My Life, where he served as understudy for the lead role, swing, and dance captain. The production opened on October 20, 2005, and closed on December 11 after 61 performances.

His breakthrough came in 2006 when he originated the role of Melchior Gabor in the Broadway production of Spring Awakening, a rock musical adapted from Frank Wedekind's 1891 play by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater and directed by Michael Mayer. Groff had first been cast in a workshop of the production at Baruch College alongside Lea Michele and John Gallagher Jr., and the show subsequently ran off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company from May 19 through August 5, 2006, before transferring to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on Broadway. He performed the role from the production's Broadway debut on December 10, 2006, through May 18, 2008. The musical received eleven Tony Award nominations and won eight, including Best Musical, at the 61st Tony Awards, and also received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. Groff received nominations for the Drama Desk Award, the Drama League Award, and the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance, and was honored with the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance in 2007.

In 2007, Groff also lent his voice to record the roles of Rolf Gruber and Friedrich von Trapp for the Salzburg Marionette Theatre's production of The Sound of Music, which premiered on November 7 in Dallas, Texas, and whose recording continues to be used by the company for performances in Salzburg, Austria. That same year, he played the recurring role of Henry Mackler across eleven episodes of the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, though a storyline involving a school shooting was cut following the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007. In the summer of 2008, he played the lead role of Claude in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Hair, directed by Diane Paulus, running from July 22 through August 31. He declined the opportunity to reprise the role in the subsequent Broadway transfer, choosing instead to pursue film work. He also appeared off-Broadway from November 14 to December 21, 2008, as Billy Noone in Craig Lucas' Prayer for My Enemy, directed by Bartlett Sher at Playwrights Horizons.

Groff made his film debut in 2009 playing Michael Lang in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. His subsequent film credits include Louis J. Weichmann in The Conspirator (2010), Smith in The Matrix Resurrections (2021), and a father held hostage in M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin (2023). He also provided the voices of both Kristoff and Sven in Disney's Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019). On television, he became known for his recurring role as Jesse St. James in the Fox musical-comedy series Glee, appearing from 2009 to 2015, and starred as Patrick Murray in the HBO comedy-drama Looking (2014–15) and its subsequent film, Looking: The Movie (2016). He portrayed FBI Special Agent Holden Ford in the Netflix period crime drama Mindhunter from 2017 to 2019. His performance in the Disney+ live stage recording of Hamilton (2020) earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Groff returned to Broadway as King George III in the original production of Hamilton, which began performances in 2015. In 2019, he starred as Seymour Krelborn in an off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors. In 2024, he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for playing Franklin Shepard in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. He subsequently starred as Bobby Darin in the original Broadway production of Just in Time, which began performances in 2025, earning an additional Tony Award nomination. In 2022, Groff executive produced the HBO documentary Spring Awakening: Those You've Known, which documented the fifteen-year reunion of the original Spring Awakening cast.