Josh Radnor

Josh Radnor is an American actor, filmmaker, musician, and author born on July 29, 1974, in Columbus, Ohio. He grew up in Bexley, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, where he was raised in Conservative Judaism alongside his two sisters. His mother, Carol Radnor, worked as a high school counselor, and his father, Alan Radnor, practiced as a medical malpractice lawyer. Radnor attended Columbus Torah Academy, an Orthodox Jewish day school, before moving on to Bexley High School. He later enrolled at Kenyon College, where the theater department honored him with the Paul Newman Award. During the spring of 1995, he trained at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, and graduated from Kenyon in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in drama. Following college, he participated in an Israel experience program in Tzfat with Livnot U'Lehibanot in 1997, then pursued graduate study at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting.

Radnor made his Broadway debut in 2002 in The Graduate, succeeding Jason Biggs in the lead role opposite Kathleen Turner and Alicia Silverstone. In 2004, he appeared in The Paris Letter alongside Neil Patrick Harris, who would later become his co-star on television. His Broadway work continued with She Loves Me Not, and in 2014 he portrayed Isaac in Disgraced, which opened on October 23 of that year at the Lyceum Theatre and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play.

His most widely recognized screen role came with the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, in which he starred as Ted Mosby from 2005 to 2014. The Emmy Award-winning series ran for nine seasons and featured Radnor alongside Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segel, and Alyson Hannigan. Beyond that role, Radnor played Dr. Jedediah Foster in the PBS Civil War drama Mercy Street from 2016 to 2017, Lou Mazzuchelli in the musical series Rise, and Lonny Flash in the Amazon Prime series Hunters from 2020 to 2023, where he acted alongside Logan Lerman and Al Pacino. He also took a recurring role in the FX on Hulu limited series Fleishman Is in Trouble in 2022, appearing alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Caplan, and Adam Brody in a series that earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. He voiced Durpleton in the Netflix animated series Centaurworld in 2021.

Radnor has also built a career as a writer and director in film. His debut feature, Happythankyoumoreplease, a comedy-drama he wrote, directed, and starred in, was released in 2010 and won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award while also receiving a Grand Jury Prize nomination. His second film, Liberal Arts, which he again wrote, directed, and starred in alongside Elizabeth Olsen, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2012. In 2016, he collaborated with the band Cloud Cult on the film The Seeker.

In addition to acting and filmmaking, Radnor has pursued music. He formed the duo Radnor and Lee with Australian musician Ben Lee, whom he had known for roughly twelve or thirteen years after the two met on the set of How I Met Your Mother. Their debut album, Radnor and Lee, was released on November 10, 2017, on Gold Village Entertainment, followed by a second album, Golden State, released in June 2020 on Flower Moon Records. Radnor also released a solo EP, One More Then I'll Let You Go, on April 16, 2021, on Flower Moon Records, with Rolling Stone premiering the first single, "The High Road," on March 10, 2021. Subsequent solo releases include Eulogy, Vol. 1 in 2023 and Eulogy, Vol. II in 2024, both on Optimal Grip.

Radnor returned to the stage in 2024, appearing in The Ally, a play by Itamar Moses directed by Lila Neugebauer at The Public Theater in New York. In his personal life, he began dating psychologist Dr. Jordana Jacobs in 2022 after the two met at a meditation retreat in upstate New York, and they married in January 2024. In February 2026, they announced the birth of a son.