Randy Harrison

Randolph Clarke Harrison, born November 2, 1977, in Nashua, New Hampshire, is an American actor whose work spans television, film, stage, and regional theatre. He is widely recognized for portraying Justin Taylor, a gay teenager, in the American version of Queer as Folk, a Showtime drama based on a British television series. The show premiered in 2000 and ran for five seasons before concluding in 2005.

Harrison's early involvement in performance began in Nashua, where he appeared in a school production of Peter Pan at Bicentennial Elementary School and played Winthrop in a 1987 staging of The Music Man with the Actorsingers. At age eleven, he relocated with his family to Alpharetta, Georgia, where he attended Pace Academy, a private preparatory school in Atlanta. His father works as an executive at a large paper company, and he has described his mother as a "thwarted artist." He has one older sibling, a brother who works as a bank manager.

He went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theatre from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. While there, he performed in university productions including Hello Again, Shopping and Fucking, and Children of Eden. He also accumulated pre-professional credits at regional venues, including Violet at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1776 at the St. Louis Municipal Theatre, and West Side Story at the Forestburg Playhouse, along with productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Real Inspector Hound, and A Cheever Evening.

Harrison made his Broadway debut in summer 2004, playing Boq in Wicked. His Broadway career extended through 2016 and included a starring role in Cabaret. His Off-Broadway credits are extensive and include A Letter for Ethel Kennedy by Christopher Gorman at MCC Theater in 2002, the Father in Oak Tree at Perry Street Theatre in 2006, Young Spencer in Edward II at Red Bull Theatre in 2007–08, Eros in Antony and Cleopatra at Theatre for a New Audience in 2008, Laszlo Fickes and Gerhardt Zeitzler in A Singing Forest at the Public Theatre in 2009, and Kevin Adams-Weller in Harbor at Primary Stages in 2013. He also participated in staged readings and a workshop production of A Tyger's Heart for Red Bull Theatre in February 2011.

Regional theatre has formed a significant part of Harrison's career, particularly at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, where he appeared regularly beginning in 2005. His roles there included Alan Strang in Equus, the title role in Amadeus, Bill Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Frank Gardner in Mrs. Warren's Profession, Lucky in Waiting for Godot, Osvald Alving in Ghosts, Nagg in Endgame, and the title character in The Who's Tommy. Additional regional credits include Lysander, Thisbe, and Cobweb in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by the SITI Company in 2006, Tom in the Guthrie Theater's The Glass Menagerie in 2007, Andy Warhol in the Yale Repertory Theatre's Pop! in 2009, Sebastian in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Twelfth Night in 2010, and Ken in the George Street Playhouse's Red in 2012.

On television, Harrison appeared in the 2002 made-for-television film Bang Bang You're Dead, playing a character named Sean. He also portrays Brutus in a postmodern feature film adaptation of Julius Caesar, directed by Patrick Donelley, opposite John Shea in the title role. In 2002, he appeared in the play Deviant by Sophie Rand at the New York International Fringe Festival.

In 2006, Harrison co-founded the Arts Bureau, an organization encompassing theatre, film, music, and writing. The group's first theatrical production came in July 2007, based on the work of Anton Chekhov, and its first short film, Thinking, was shot in late 2007 and early 2008 and screened at several film festivals. A feature film, Lorton Lake, was shot in summer 2008.

Harrison is gay and dated Advertising Age columnist Simon Dumenco from 2002 to 2008, having met when Dumenco interviewed him for a New York magazine cover story. In 2024, Harrison announced his intention to leave public life and pursue a career as a therapist.