Rannells moved to New York City in 1997 after high school, studying theater at Marymount Manhattan College for two years before he started auditioning full-time and began landing roles. He did voice-over work and commercials, including a 1996 Grease spoof with Amy Adams. He did community theater with fellow Omahan and Creighton Prep alumnus Conor Oberst. Rannells was 11 when he acted in his first play. Īs a child, he took classes at the Emmy Gifford Children's Theater and performed at the Omaha Community Playhouse and the Firehouse Dinner Theatre and the Dundee Dinner Theatre. His family lived in the Hanscom Park neighborhood in Omaha. Rannells attended Our Lady of Lourdes grade school in Omaha, and then Creighton Preparatory School, an all-boys Roman Catholic school in Omaha. He is the fourth of five siblings, with three sisters and an older brother. Rannells was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Charlotte and Ronald Rannells.
In the 2010s, he began working as a screen actor most notably, he starred in the 2012 NBC sitcom The New Normal and played the recurring role of Elijah in HBO's Girls (2012–2017). Other Broadway credits include Hairspray (2005), Jersey Boys (2009), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2010), Hamilton (2015), and The Boys in the Band (2018). He received his second Tony nomination in 2017 for his performance as Whizzer in the 2016 Broadway revival of Falsettos. Rannells is best known for originating the role of Elder Price in the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater AlbumĪndrew Scott Rannells (born August 23, 1978) is an American film, stage, television and voice actor.