Melissa Benoist

Melissa Benoist was born in Littleton, Colorado, on October 4, 1988. Her father Jim Benoist is a physician and her mother Julie Benoist is a homemaker. Her parents divorced when Melissa was very young. When she was three, she started taking dance classes and at the age of four, she acted in a church play directed by her aunt. Her two sisters are now well settled in their respective careers—Jessica is a novelist and Kristina is an ecological scientist.

In 2007, she completed her schooling from Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, and in 2011, she graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City with a degree in theatre arts.

She was married to fellow actor Blake Jenner from 2015 to 2017. Currently she is in a relationship with Chris Wood.

Melissa Benoist started performing with the Academy of Theatre Arts at Disneyland as a young teen. She also performed in local stage production of plays like ‘Cinderella’, ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ and ‘Evita’.

She started her film career in 2008 with the film ‘Tennessee’. In 2010, she bagged several roles in television series like ‘Blue Bloods’, ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ and ‘The Good Wife’. In the following year, she was featured as Stacy Moore in an episode of the series ‘Homeland’.

Her breakthrough role came with the series ‘Glee’ in 2012. She auditioned five times at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, and had to sing five different songs at each audition. This was followed by two screen tests in California before she was finally selected. She appeared in 35 episodes in four seasons of the drama series. In 2012, she also bagged a contract from Coca-Cola as its ambassador for a new product called Coke Mismo. The campaigns started the following year in Philippines.

She was cast as Nicole in the 2014 film ‘Whiplash’, written and directed by Damien Chazelle. The film earned two awards at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2015, she once again tasted success with the lead role in the television series ‘Supergirl’, developed by Ali Adler, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg. It was aired on CBS. In the same year, she did three episodes of the series ‘The Flash’ and landed the leading role in the movie ‘Oxford’ opposite Sam Heughan.

In 2016, she appeared in the television series ‘Arrow’ followed by ‘Legends of Tomorrow’. In the same year, she was cast as the widow of the deceased Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Peter Berg's film ‘Patriots Day’. That year, she also did another film called ‘Lowriders’, directed by Ricardo de Montreuil.