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Jonathan Groff Jonathan Drew Groff is an American actor and
singer. He originated the lead role of Melchior Gabor in the award winning Broadway rock musical
Spring Awakening, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination in 2007. He later portrayed
Claude in the 2008 Off-Broadway revival of Hair and received critical acclaim for his
role in the West End revival of Deathtrap in 2010. He regularly appears on the Off-Broadway
stage and has earned an Obie Award for starring in two of Craig Lucas' plays, Prayer for My
Enemy and The Singing Forrest. He is also known for his previously recurring role as
Jesse St. James on the FOX series Glee. More recently, Groff starred in the first-ever
screen adaptation of author David Sedaris' work, C.O.G., in which he portrayed a character
based on Sedaris himself. He also voiced Kristoff in Disney's newest Academy Award nominated
feature film, Frozen, and is the star of the HBO series, Looking.
Early life Groff was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
to a Methodist mother – Julie, a physical education teacher – and a Mennonite father
– Jim, a harness horse trainer and driver. He has one older brother, David. Of his upbringing,
he has said "My mother’s side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It
was conservative in that I had strong values—sitting down and eating with the family every day,
listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at
Sunday school. But at the same time, my parents always encouraged my brother and me to be
happy with what we were doing. My parents were athletes in high school; my mom and my
dad were the stars of the basketball team, but they never pushed my brother and me to
be anything we didn’t want to be." He graduated from Conestoga Valley High School in 2003
and was going to attend Carnegie Mellon University until he booked his first professional job
in New York City, the Broadway musical In My Life.
Career Groff booked his first acting job in 2005
as a swing/dance captain for the musical In My Life by Joseph Brooks. The musical was
about a boy with Tourette's Syndrome, and Groff understudied the lead part. He never
performed in the role. Groff originated the role of Melchior Gabor in the Broadway production
of Spring Awakening. He played the role from the musical's Broadway debut on December 10,
2006 through May 18, 2008. He also played the same role in the original Off Broadway
production earlier during the summer of 2006. Groff also was in the National Tour of The
Sound of Music as Rolf, and appeared in Fame at the North Shore Music Theater in Beverly,
Massachusetts. In April 2007, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his role in Spring
Awakening. In May 2007, he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Leading Actor in a
Musical for his performance, with the award eventually going to David Hyde Pierce.
He played the recurring role of Henry Mackler on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live. His
storyline about a school shooting on the long-running soap opera was nixed due to the Virginia Tech
shooting in April 2007, and he is no longer on the show. Before performing on the Broadway
stage, Jonathan was a performer at The Ephrata Performing Arts Center in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.
There he portrayed such characters as Edgar in Bat Boy: The Musical and Ugly in Honk!.
Groff played as Claude in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Hair, which ran
July 22 through August 31, 2008. He also appeared as Michael Lang in Ang Lee's major motion
picture, Taking Woodstock. Groff has appeared in the Off-Broadway production of Prayer for
My Enemy by Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Light in the Piazza) about the consequences
the Iraq war has had on an American family. In August 2009, Groff performed The Bacchae
as Dionysus as a part of the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park.
He was guest starring on Glee as Jesse St. James, the male lead of rival glee club Vocal
Adrenaline for eight of the back nine episodes. He also serves as a love interest for his
former Spring Awakening co-star Lea Michele's character, Rachel Berry. Newsweek critic Ramin
Satoodeh stated that Groff was unconvincing in the role of the straight Jesse ("he seems
more like your average theater queen, a better romantic match for Kurt than Rachel"). Groff's
performance was defended by Glee creator Ryan Murphy and guest star Kristin Chenoweth, both
of whom described Satoodeh's essay as homophobic; it was also condemned by GLAAD president Jarrett
Barrios. In August 2010, he made his West End debut
in Deathtrap, at the Noël Coward Theatre in a production directed by Matthew Warchus.
Groff returned to Glee at the end of the second season, where his character tried to ask Rachel
for forgiveness. He returned to the show on May 10 to finish out the remainder of the
second season. Despite leaving the show for the first part of its third season, Groff
returned to Glee in Saturday Night Glee-ver as the coach of his former Glee club, Vocal
Adrenaline. From August to October 2012, Groff appeared as Ian Todd in the second and final
season of the Starz TV series Boss. Groff played Ken in the Center Theatre Group's
production of the Tony Award winning play Red, alongside Alfred Molina reprising his
role as painter Mark Rothko. The show ran from August 1 to September 9, 2012. In March
2013, Groff and Molina reprised their roles for six more performances of the play, this
time in the L.A. Theatre Works. These performances, like all that take place on LATW, were recorded
to be broadcast on radio. Groff voiced one of the lead roles in Disney's
animated feature Frozen. His character, Kristoff, is a rugged mountain man and ice trader. The
movie premiered November 19, 2013, and went into wide theatrical release on November 27.
Groff also stars as Patrick, a gay video-game developer, in HBO's comedy Looking, which
as of May 2013 has an eight-episode initial order. In April 2013, Groff joined another
HBO production, playing Craig in the TV movie adaptation of the Larry Kramer play, The Normal
Heart. Personal life
In October 2009, Groff told Broadway.com during the National Equality March in Washington,
D.C., that he is "gay and proud". Since 2010, Groff was rumored to be dating actor Zachary
Quinto. In September 2012, Quinto confirmed that he and Groff were in a relationship.
In July 2013, it was reported that the two had broken up.
Groff has been close friends with actress Lea Michele since meeting her upon auditioning
for Spring Awakening in 2005. Groff is a first cousin of singer James Wolpert,
a semifinalist on the fifth season of The Voice.
Theatre credits Other works include a national tour of The
Sound of Music as Rolf, as well as Ugly in Honk! and Edgar in Bat Boy: The Musical, both
at the Ephrata Performing Arts Center. Discography
Cast recordings Spring Awakening (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
(2006) Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna (2010)
Glee: The Music, Volume 3 Showstoppers (2010) Glee: The Music, Journey to Regionals (2010)
Glee: The Music, The Complete Season One (2010) Glee: The Music, Volume 6 (2011)
Frozen (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2013)
Other recordings Dreaming Wide Awake: The Music of Scott Alan
(2007) as featured soloist on the track "Now" Audiobooks
Broadway Nights by Seth Rudetsky (2008) as Mason
Featured singles Other appearances
In February 2011, Jonathan appeared in two promotional videos for his brother Dave's
commercial kitchen supply site, WEBstaurantstore.com. The first was one promoting the company's
Facebook fanpage and contests for its customers. The second was a special Valentine's Day video
in which he made a martini and promoted products sold on the site. The martini he made was
a special recipe created especially for Jonathan called the "She Loves Me Martini", for the
video by Dee Brun, "The Cocktail Deeva". Awards and nominations