Jonathan Groff

Groff came out of the theatre and has never really left it, which is unusual for someone with this much screen work. He arrived on television as Jesse St. James, Glee's smug rival singer, and in film as the promoter in Taking Woodstock, and for a while it looked as though he would be typecast as young men who are pleased with themselves.

Two things broke that. The first was Frozen, where Kristoff is a comic supporting role in a film that gives the songs and the plot to other people, and Groff makes him work through generosity rather than volume; he has now played the part across a decade of sequels and shorts. The second was Mindhunter, which is the performance to argue about. Holden Ford is an FBI agent interviewing incarcerated killers, and Groff plays intelligence, charm and rising appetite as one substance: the better he gets at the job, the less pleasant he is to be near, and most of it is conveyed by a very slight change in how quickly he smiles.

Looking, before that, gave him a lead in a series about ordinary romantic disappointment among gay men in San Francisco, and it is the warmest thing he has done. Stage work has continued alongside all of it, and he holds a Tony Award, a Grammy Award and a Primetime Emmy nomination; he was named to the Time 100 in 2026. Recent screen work has been more adventurous: a swaggering bounty hunter in Doctor Who, a rewritten Agent Smith in The Matrix Resurrections, a father under siege in Knock at the Cabin.