Justin Bartha

Justin Lee Bartha was born on July 21, 1978, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and relocated to West Bloomfield, Michigan at age eight. He was raised in a Reform Jewish family and graduated from West Bloomfield High School in 1996. He subsequently moved to New York City to study filmmaking and theatre at New York University's Tisch School of Arts.

Bartha entered the film industry working behind the camera as a production assistant on Analyze This before making his on-screen acting debut in 54, playing a clubgoer. In 2003, he wrote and directed the short film Highs and Lows, which screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and also wrote, produced, and starred in an MTV pilot called The Dustin and Justin Show. That same year, he appeared alongside Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken, and Al Pacino in Gigli. In 2004, Bartha took on the role of Riley Poole in the National Treasure franchise, a part he reprised in the 2007 sequel and later in a Disney+ continuation of the series. He co-starred in the 2006 film Failure to Launch and appeared in NBC's sitcom Teachers, which aired six episodes that same year.

Bartha played Doug Billings in The Hangover trilogy, portraying one of the Wolfpack members whose disappearance after a night of partying drives the plot of the films. He was cast in the 2007 indie drama Holy Rollers, in which his character draws a young Hasidic man played by Jesse Eisenberg into drug dealing; the film was released in 2010. He also starred opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Rebound, directed by Bart Freundlich, which began shooting in New York in April 2008. Bartha later collaborated again with Eisenberg on Eisenberg's play Asuncion and, in 2014, on A Little Part of All Of Us for Playing On Air, a nonprofit organization that records short plays for public radio and podcast.

On Broadway, Bartha appeared in the 2010 revival of Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, playing the role of Max. The production, a farcical comedy directed by Stanley Tucci, began previews at the Music Box Theatre on March 11, 2010, and officially opened on April 4, 2010. He performed alongside Tony Shalhoub, Anthony LaPaglia, Brooke Adams, and Jan Maxwell. The production received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. In 2011, Bartha starred in the premiere of Zach Braff's play All New People at Second Stage Theatre, which ran from June 28 through mid-August under the direction of Peter DuBois, with Anna Camp, David Wilson Barnes, and Krysten Ritter as co-stars.

In television, Bartha signed on in February 2012 to co-star in the NBC comedy pilot The New Normal, which was ordered to series on May 7, 2012. The show centered on a gay couple, played by Bartha and Andrew Rannells, and the surrogate mother they chose to carry their child, played by Georgia King. It premiered on September 11, 2012, and was canceled on May 10, 2013. Beginning in 2018, Bartha co-starred as Colin Morrello in the first two seasons of the CBS All Access legal and political drama The Good Fight. In 2021, he signed on to play Robert Morgenthau in the second season of the EPIX drama Godfather of Harlem and co-starred opposite Jason Momoa in the Netflix film Sweet Girl. In 2022, he appeared in a standalone episode of Atlanta's third season titled The Big Payback, playing Marshall Johnson, a man confronted with paying slavery reparations.

Bartha has also been involved in community theatre work, guest directing the Matrix Theatre Company's Teen Company in Are You Passing?, a play addressing the state of education in Detroit. He married Pilates instructor and B The Method creator Lia Smith on January 4, 2014, in Oahu, Hawaii. The couple's first daughter was born on April 13, 2014, and their second daughter on April 16, 2016.