Ben Platt

Known for his acclaimed work as a performer in both stage musicals and screen projects, Tony Award winner Ben Platt first drew major attention through roles in the Pitch Perfect film series and the original Broadway run of Dear Evan Hansen. Following a string of contributions to soundtracks, theater productions, and motion pictures, he issued his first solo album, the pop-oriented Sing to Me Instead, in 2019; the set climbed to number 18 on the Billboard 200. Balancing acting commitments with music, Platt portrayed a lead character and performed several songs for the Netflix series The Politician while delivering his second studio album, Reverie, in 2021. He also returned to the role of Evan Hansen for the feature-film version of the musical that same year. His subsequent headline part came in the Tony-nominated revival of Parade, whose cast album appeared on Interscope in 2023—the same label that released his folk-inflected third album, Honeymind, in 2024.

A native of Los Angeles, Platt is the son of film and theater producer Marc Platt, whose credits include La La Land and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, and the older brother of actor, writer, and composer Jonah Platt. He has recalled developing a passion for performing at age nine after landing the part of Winthrop in a Hollywood Bowl staging of The Music Man that featured Kristin Chenoweth and Eric McCormack. Additional Hollywood Bowl appearances in Camelot and The Sound of Music followed, and at eleven he joined the national tour of Caroline, or Change. While attending the performing-arts institution Adderley, he took part in further student musicals; he completed his secondary education at Harvard-Westlake School in 2011.

Platt enrolled briefly at Columbia University in New York, yet withdrew within weeks to play Benji in the 2012 musical comedy Pitch Perfect. The movie’s hit cast album, centered on collegiate a cappella contests, surfaced on Universal that September. Later in 2012 he began portraying Elder Cunningham in Chicago’s production of The Book of Mormon, making his Broadway debut in the role in January 2014 and remaining until January 2015. Pitch Perfect 2 arrived later that year, alongside his appearance in the Meryl Streep comedy-drama Ricki and the Flash. From July through August 2015 he starred as the title character in a Washington, D.C. mounting of Dear Evan Hansen, a musical he had helped develop during its workshop phase.

When Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen reached Broadway in December 2016, the story of a socially anxious high-school senior quickly became a commercial success and earned nine Tony Award nominations, ultimately securing six victories, among them Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for Platt. The original Broadway cast recording debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200 in February 2017—the strongest opening for such an album since Camelot in 1961. Two months afterward, Time Magazine included him on its list of the 100 Most Influential People, and in September he signed with Atlantic Records as a singer and songwriter.

In March 2018 Platt joined Lin-Manuel Miranda for the benefit single “Found/Tonight,” an amalgam of material from Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen released by Atlantic to support March for Our Lives, the gun-reform demonstration held after the Parkland, Florida high-school shooting the previous month; the track reached the upper half of the Billboard Hot 100. Early 2019 brought two singles—the wistful “Bad Habit” and the “Ease My Mind,” which addressed anxiety and depression—preceding the March arrival of Sing to Me Instead, which entered the Billboard 200’s top twenty. That year he also assumed the central role in the Netflix series The Politician and contributed vocals to its soundtrack.

Platt resurfaced in 2020 with the Netflix concert special Live from Radio City Music Hall. Co-written with Jon Bellion and the Monsters & Strangerz, among others, his track “Imagine” emerged in April 2021 and peaked inside the top thirty of Billboard’s Adult Top 40 Airplay chart before appearing on his second studio album, Reverie, that August. Around the same time his interpretation of Lady Gaga’s “Yoü and I” featured in the tenth-anniversary campaign for her album Born This Way, and he starred in the cinematic adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, accompanied by its soundtrack, both released in September 2021. The following year he teamed with singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles for a duet version of his 2019 composition “Grow as We Go.” He subsequently moved to Interscope Records, which issued the cast album for Parade, the Tony-nominated musical in which he performed the lead. The introspective single “Andrew,” the first preview of his next studio project, surfaced in early 2024, and the Dave Cobb-produced Honeymind, showcasing a subdued, folk-leaning aesthetic, followed in May.