Lea Michele

By the age of nine Lea Michele had already reached Broadway prominence, building her reputation first as a theater performer before taking on a part in Glee that established her as both a television actor and a charting pop singer. Although her family home was in New Jersey, she passed the bulk of her early years in New York City and entered the cast of Les Misérables during 1995. She aged out of the part of Young Cosette and moved to a new production in 1998, joining the original run of Ragtime. Once she reached her teenage years she stepped away from large-scale musicals to concentrate on her education.

While enrolled at high school in Tenafly, New Jersey, she joined developmental workshops for the rock musical Spring Awakening. Duncan Sheik composed the score for a story centered on adolescent sexual discovery in late-19th-century Germany. Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater spent seven years refining the book and score as Michele finished high school and resumed her Broadway career. After two seasons in Fiddler on the Roof she recommitted to Spring Awakening, which opened off-Broadway in 2006 before transferring to Broadway later that year with Michele in the central role.

The production achieved major success, capturing eight Tony Awards in 2007 and earning Michele a Drama Desk nomination. Its cast recording received a Grammy the following year. She departed the show that May and reappeared in 2009 as Rachel Berry, the driven high-school student on the series Glee. Comparable to Spring Awakening in its unconventional approach and broad appeal, the program followed the ups and downs of a high-school glee club. Every cast member performed their own vocals, and several tracks, notably the cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” that paired Michele with co-star Cory Monteith, registered as authentic hits.

Her first solo album, Louder, arrived in 2014 and included contributions from Australian vocalist Sia, American singer-songwriter Christina Perri, and producers Stargate and Colin Munroe. That same year she published her debut book, Brunette Ambition, and joined the final season of the FX drama Sons of Anarchy. She maintained her multifaceted career with a role on the horror-comedy series Scream Queens, the 2015 release of her second book You First: Journal Your Way to Your Best Life, and participation on the 2016 charity single “This Is for My Girls,” which supported the White House’s #62MillionGirls campaign and the Obama administration’s Let Girls Learn initiative.

She returned in 2017 with her second album, Places, whose material evoked her musical-theater background and entered the charts at number 28 upon its April release. Television work continued with her appearance in the ABC sitcom The Mayor from 2017 to 2018. In 2019 she starred in the holiday film Same Time, Next Christmas and released the seasonal album Christmas in the City.