Darren Criss Wins His First Tony—a Look at His Career and Life Off-Stage

Darren Criss took home the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical last night for his starring role in Broadway hit Maybe Happy Ending, making him the first ever Asian American actor to do so. Criss, who got his start on the hit musical show Glee in 2010, has also won an Emmy award, meaning he is halfway to an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony). To celebrate this, we take a trip down memory lane to discover how Criss got his start, what he really thinks of his more iconic roles and all about his wife, Mia Swier. Read on for more about our favorite Broadway ‘Gleek’!  

How Darren Criss got his start

Criss was born in 1987 in San Francisco, California, and was discovered after his University of Michigan’s production of A Very Potter Musical went viral in 2009. 

“I don’t think there would be any place for something like A Very Potter Musical now, because it would have been conceived differently,” the actor told Popverse of the musical in April 2024. “It wouldn’t have even been considered.” 

Following his internet success, Criss was cast in a few minor roles in projects like Little White Lie (2009), Eastwick (2009) and Cold Case (2010) before being cast as Blaine Anderson in the widely successful teen drama Glee in 2010. 

Darren Criss’s iconic role on ‘Glee’ 

Glee was a musical dramedy that followed a group of students at McKinley High School who joined the school’s Glee Club, despite it not being considered popular at the time. Criss joined the show in Season 2, playing Blaine Anderson, the eventual husband of Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer). 

“I have a lot of queer folks that come up to me, particularly older folks, that will say how much that relationship meant to them,” Criss told The Independent in December 2021. “They’ll say, ‘When I was growing up, I didn’t really ever get to see that on TV,’ and then I always remind them, neither did I. As a cis straight man, I also didn’t see that. And while I have not grown up as a queer person, I’m a lifetime subscriber, man. I’m a season ticket holder to the queer experience. I grew up in San Francisco in the Nineties; these are people that raised my cultural awareness, [so] it also means a lot to me.”

Criss remained on Glee until 2015, and to this day, many people still consider that his biggest and most well-known role. 

From Versace to Broadway: Criss’s career post-‘Glee’

After leaving life as a glee club member, or ‘Gleek,’  behind, Criss’s career continued to soar. He went on to star in things like Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2014 to 2017), American Horror Story (2015), Supergirl (2017) and The Flash (2017). 

Then, in 2018, he went on to play Andrew Cunanan in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which earned him a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy. 

“I’ve been kind of waiting my whole life for an opportunity like this,” Criss said in 2019, per ABC. “I was sort of on the sidelines being like, ‘Alright, put me in, coach.’ So the fact that Ryan [Murphy] believed in that, I’m very much indebted.” 

Following that, Criss has been in Hollywood (2020), Royalties (2020), Babes (2024), Beastars (2024) and Gabby’s Dollhouse (2024 to 2025). 

He also returned to the Broadway stage several times over the years. 

Darren Criss’s Tony-winning turn in ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ 

Given how talented a singer Criss is, it makes sense that he has been in a number of Broadway musicals over the course of his career. In April 2015, he played Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a role that he kept until July 2015. They then went on to star in American Buffalo in 2022 and Chess later that same year. 

Now, his most well-known role is as Oliver in Maybe Happy Ending, which opened in November 2024. Criss remained in that role until March 2025, and it was the one that won him a Tony award. 

“People always talk on and on and on, like myself, about the community of Broadway. It’s not some disingenuous canned line, it’s a real thing, like we’re all roommates,” Criss told Deadline in June. “We all work within several blocks of each other. We’ve all seen each other’s work. We’re all familiar on a very intimate level that by the time we’re all in Radio City, most of the people in that room have worked together, have hung out together, have shared experiences in a way that when you’re working in film and television, just by the nature of the way those those pieces are created, don’t. So, yeah, if you can’t tell, I love the Tonys.” 

Meet Darren Criss’s wife, Mia Swier

Criss, age 38, has been married to his wife Mia Swier since 2019. The two met in 2006, but didn’t start dating until 2010. They then got engaged in 2018 and married a year later. They have since welcomed two children together. 

“The real hero about this, for this remarkable journey, is my wife, Mia, who took a massive swing on allowing me to do this and to allow this crazy upheaval in our life to make this logistically possible, and for bearing the brunt of raising two tiny friends under three so that I could raise a singing robot at the Belasco Theatre eight times a week,” Criss said in his Tony Award acceptance speech.”

“Mia, you’re the very pedestal that upholds the shiny, spinny bit in our lives, and your love and your support for me and our beautiful children, combined with the miracle of working on something as magical as Maybe Happy Ending has been and will always be, award enough.”

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