For Halloween, I've gone trick-or-treating as Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, and Robin Hood.
— Jonathan Groff
When you get to really involve yourself with a piece and the other people, and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think.
Playing King George, for me, was a lesson in stillness and timing.
The difference between being in the closet and out of the closet as a gay man is such a huge shift. I feel so connected still to that 22-year-old, but the idea that I was not open with that part of my life - which I am now so open about - is sort of surreal.
I would say 'Looking' and 'Spring Awakening' are the most important and personal projects I've ever been apart of.
I'd moved to New York to pursue a career in theatre, and it's very practical how you do it - I just went to every open call going.
I left 'Spring Awakening,' and within a month of leaving the show, I came out to my parents and to my friends and broke up with my boyfriend and moved into an apartment of my own and completely changed my life.
There's kind of a gift in being gay because, if you come out, you're forced to express yourself.
I remember telling my mom, 'Mom, I'm gay, but I'm not going to march in a parade or anything.' That's what I was telling my parents and all my friends and everything. I'm gay, but I'm not going to be on a float or something. Cut to five years later, and I was the grand marshal of the gay pride parade.
Before 'Mindhunter,' I was doing this show called 'Looking' on HBO.
I've never met Lena Dunham, but I'm such a huge fan - I think she's a crazy genius.
If someone pitches me a really great idea for an album, I would do it.
I'd always done musicals, and so living in the world of straight plays and working with off-Broadway actors and living in that community was a completely life-changing experience.
I loved traditional musical comedy. That was my passion. Then 'Spring Awakening' happened, and it took that rock n' roll and pop music to change gears for me.
The idea of faking empathy to take a step forward to understanding - it's a really powerful idea.
Ultimately, we're actors: I'm putting on a costume, so we're playing pretend.
As an actor, I have these tics that I don't even know exist.
In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film, it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act, and you're in the audience.
I did 'Spring Awakening' on Broadway for about three years, and I did over 500 performances.
I taught a class about the Tony Awards at a summer theater camp the year after I graduated from high school. So, the first time I was nominated for 'Spring Awakening,' it felt like a surreal dream: it was every childhood dream I had come true. It felt like a fairy tale.
I'd rather be a working actor and not hiding anything in my personal life.
I feel like, with a television show, you're always biting your nails hoping you're going to get that next season.
I moved to New York on October 21, 2004, and it was the day that the Chelsea Grill, a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen on 9th Avenue between 46th and 47th Street, opened. I had never waited a table in my life, but I walked in and lied to the manager in a very J. Pierrepont Finch way.
When I was 20 years old, I got cast in 'Spring Awakening' and got swept up in this experience where it was kind of tunnel vision. We were working - it was nonstop.
I was journaling in Florence, and I was like, 'Oh, I have to come out of the closet. I have to break up with this guy' - he was my 'roommate.' So that was my awakening moment, when I stepped into my own skin while in a foreign country by myself and had a very stereotypical moment of revelation.
Coming out, for me, was slightly painful. It was a relief, but it was also painful.
The word 'improv' always makes me feel a little anxious because I always feel like we'll have to pull props out of a bag and find 800 different ways to talk about a stick, the way you do in theater school.
I am such a huge fan of both of those shows - I've seen every episode of 'Sex in the City' and every episode of 'Girls' at least once, some multiple times.
I ended up doing three very complicated off-Broadway plays that, in certain ways, were not successes in that they were received in a complicated way. But for me they were successes because they forced me to act without singing, which I'd never done before.
My first film that I got right after 'Spring Awakening' was called 'Taking Woodstock,' and Ang Lee was the director.
When I moved to New York, I wanted to be in the ensemble of 'Hairspray.' That was my goal.
I haven't had anyone say, 'No, we can't because he's gay.' In fact, it's been quite the opposite.
I beat 'Super Mario Bros 1,' '2,' and '3.'
I went to a local high school in Lancaster. Not much I can say about it; it was pretty much your typical public high school back in Pennsylvania.
Maybe someday I'll have a job where it haunts me or it's hard to move on.
'Spring Awakening' was a discovery for all involved. None of us will ever have that specific sense of revelation in the same way - that is probably the thing I miss the most.
I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, watching the Tony Awards on TV. Not just 'watching' the Tony Awards on TV - I would record them on a VHS tape and bring them in to school and show them to the other kids.
I feel like loyalty is such a rare quality in this world, particularly the entertainment world.
The first job I got was a production of 'Fame - the Musical,' at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts, and it got me my Equity card, too. I waited 12 hours to be seen for it, though!
I was playing this character, Melchior Gabor, who was a rebel and who was a person who didn't let the world define him, and who stood up to authority and was this kind of revolutionary... And when I left 'Spring Awakening,' I came out of that experience feeling like... I had cultivated this side of my personality that hadn't existed before.
I did have AOL Instant Messenger when I was in middle school.
I got cast for 'Spring Awakening' when I was 20. Every dream I had came true in that moment.
When I was doing 'Spring Awakening' the first couple of years I was living in New York, I was gay, and I was living with my 'roommate,' who was my boyfriend but was my roommate to everyone else.
I feel like certainly there are people expecting 'Looking' to be representative of everyone that's gay, the entire gay community. And it's a dangerous expectation to come in watching the show expecting that. Expecting that out of any show.
It's so awesome to be a part of something that is successful not because there's a famous person in it or because it's a revival of something, but because it's so fresh and original.
As a kid growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, all I wanted to do was be on Broadway in a musical. 'Spring Awakening' kind of answered all of my questions and fulfilled all of my dreams - beyond my wildest dreams.
After 'Spring Awakening,' I wanted to do things that are really challenging and outside my comfort zone: things that scare me a little and make me grow.
There's something special about 'Looking.'
If I've had roadblocks along the way for being gay, I'm not aware of them.
I was obsessed with Nintendo.
