John Lloyd Young

John Lloyd Mills Young (born July 4, 1975) is an American actor. In 2006, he won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his role as Frankie Valli in Broadway's Jersey Boys. He is the only American actor to date to have received a Lead Actor in a Musical Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Award for a Broadway debut. Young sang lead vocals on the Grammy Award-winning Jersey Boys cast album, certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Young reprised his role as Frankie Valli in Warner Brothers' film adaptation of Jersey Boys, directed by Clint Eastwood and released June 20, 2014. Young was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. He was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on November 21, 2013. He resigned from the President's Committee in August, 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions." Early life Young was born in Sacramento, California, the son of Rosemarie Joan (Cianciola) and Karl Bruce Young, a Strategic Air Command tanker-squadron commander. His mother died when he was two years old. His father had English, Welsh and German ancestry, and his mother was of Italian descent. He was raised partly in Plattsburgh, NY, attending Plattsburgh High School and acting in their drama department. He is a graduate of Brown University. Career After moving to New York City, Young worked his way up through the ranks of the theater scene with roles in numerous regional and off-Broadway plays, including the New York-area premiere of Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy with actor John Mahoney; "Charlie" in Julia Jordan's The Summer of the Swans; "Moritz" in the Douglas Langworthy translation of Wedekind's Spring Awakening; and "Claudio" in Rinne Groff's The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem for the Target Margin Theatre.