Rob McClure

Rob McClure is an American actor and singer born on June 15, 1982, in New Milford, New Jersey, whose Broadway career spans from 2002 to 2023 and includes leading roles in productions such as Chaplin, Honeymoon in Vegas, Something Rotten!, Noises Off, and Mrs. Doubtfire. He graduated from New Milford High School in 2000, where, as a senior, he received the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for playing Charley in the school's production of Where's Charley?, an honor that came with a scholarship to attend the Paper Mill Playhouse Summer Musical Theatre Conservatory. He subsequently attended Montclair State University without completing a degree, and during those years directed musicals at New Milford High School from 2003 to 2006, including an original work he wrote titled The Bagel Factory.

McClure's first professional acting credit came at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Carousel shortly after his high school graduation. His Broadway debut followed when the Paper Mill Playhouse revival of I'm Not Rappaport, in which he appeared in the ensemble, transferred to the Booth Theatre in 2002. He returned to Broadway in 2006 to perform in Avenue Q, playing Nicky and Trekkie Monster, then joined the show's national tour beginning in 2007 in the roles of Princeton and Rod, before returning to Broadway in those same roles in 2009.

The title role in Chaplin marked a significant turning point in McClure's career. He first played Charlie Chaplin when the musical, then titled Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in California in 2010, and he continued in the role when the production transferred to Broadway in 2012. His performance earned him a nomination for the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical as well as a Theatre World Award that same year. In between his runs with Chaplin, he appeared in the New York City Center Encores! staged concert of Where's Charley? in 2011 and performed as Mozart in Amadeus at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia that same year, a venue where he had previously appeared in The Producers and Oliver!.

McClure originated the role of Jack Singer in Honeymoon in Vegas, first at the Paper Mill Playhouse from September through October 2013 and then in the Broadway production at the Nederlander Theatre in 2014 and 2015. During the same period he appeared at The Muny in St. Louis in Shrek the Musical as Lord Farquaad and in Mary Poppins as Bert in mid-2013, and played Gomez in The Addams Family at The Muny from July 14 to July 20, 2014. He returned to Broadway in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Noises Off as Tim Allgood, running from December 2015 to January 2016, and from September 2015 to March 2016 appeared as Max in Ken Ludwig's A Comedy of Tenors at the Cleveland Playhouse and the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey. He joined the Broadway cast of Something Rotten! as Nick Bottom in May 2016, then led the show's national tour in the same role from January 2017 until the tour closed in May 2018. McClure made his solo cabaret concert debut at Feinstein's/54 Below on July 1, 2016, in a show titled Smile.

In June 2018 he appeared at The Muny in Jerome Robbins' Broadway as The Setter/Emcee, and later that year created the role of Adam in Beetlejuice the Musical when it premiered at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., reprising the role on Broadway in 2019. He departed Beetlejuice in September 2019 to originate the title role of Daniel Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire, which premiered at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle from November 2019 through January 2020. The Broadway production opened at the Stephen Sondheim Theater in March 2020 but was forced to close after three performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It reopened on December 5, 2021, and ran until May 29, 2022. McClure's performance earned him his second Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

Outside of theatre, McClure was cast in a 2016 CBS pilot for a series titled Drew, based on the Nancy Drew mystery books, though the network did not pick up the series. In 2022 he made a cameo appearance as a young Fred Rogers in the HBO original series Julia. On a personal level, McClure has been married to actress Maggie Lakis since 2009; the two met while performing together in Grease in 2005. The couple have a daughter, born on December 9, 2018.