Mike Faist

At 32 years old, Mike Faist has this physical status:

Michael D. Faist (born January 5, 1992) is an American actor best known for his role in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen's starring Connor Murphy, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.

Morris Delancey, who appeared in Disney's Newsies, was also a performer.

Early life and education

Michael David Faist was born in Gahanna, Ohio, on January 5, 1992, and his parents, Julia and Kurt Faist, adopted him. The family owns a real estate business. Faist discovered as an infant that he aspired to work in the performing arts. After seeing Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire in old MGM films, particularly Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, he was enticed by dancing. "Just the way he did and moved, he was able to tell a tale by movement," Faist said. He compelled his parents to enroll him in dance lessons and began auditioning for community theater and children's theater at the age of 5. He appeared in The Wizard of Oz, a Columbus Children's Theatre performance, before appearing in a Lollipop Guild production and later joining the cast! Alice and the Wonderland are two children. After attending The Academy of Performing Arts (TAPA) in Columbus, Ohio, and while at Gahanna Lincoln High School, Faist appeared in several productions, including Danny Zuko in Grease and Simon in Jesus Christ Superstar. Faist met his birth mother and her family, who are mainly pilots by profession at the age of 17. The eldest of his two half-brothers showed him how to fly. Since then, Faist has had his pilot's license.

In 2009, he attended high school and then moved to New York to pursue a stage career. He attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy but was disenrolled after two semesters. He began selling tickets in Times Square while auditioning for Off-Broadway plays. He was collecting food stamps, earning $150 a week, and parked in the back of a McDonald's parking lot on his first day as a professional actor in the play White Christmas.

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Career

In the regional premiere of Newsies at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Faist began his acting career in 2011. Morris Delancey, a bully and publisher Joseph Pulitzer's henchman, appeared in the role. Jack Kelly, a newsboy who leads his colleagues in a strike against the publisher, was understudied by the producer when the musical arrived in Broadway. During the first number, Faist had to alternately play the roles in quick succession. "You have to make sure you're warmed up vocally and physically, and you're mentally fit," Faist said of the demands of his dual job, but he added, "It's not difficult to have fun in Newsies, about the uprising of children, and a new generation is coming in to take over the old." At the 66th Tony Awards, Newsies debuted to critical acclaim, and was nominated for Best Musical. In 2012, he made his debut in The Unspeakable Act, the coming-of-age film. The independent film received rave reviews.

In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' play Appropriate Off-Broadway in 2014, Faist continued to appear as Rhys Thurston, which attracted critical attention from Chief Theater Critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times. Skip appeared in the short film Yellow, a psychiatric ward patient in Touched with Fire and Gordie Joiner in The Grief of Others, which received critical and generally favorable feedback in 2015. In an Off-Broadway production of A Month in the Country, Olsen was also cast in an unaired pilot of the series Eye Candy as Olsen and co-starred as tutor Aleksei Belyaev opposite Peter Dinklage.

He appeared in Dear Evan Hansen's hit musical Dear Evan Hansen in August 2015, playing the heroin addict from the workshop to its Broadway transfer in 2016. The musical received critical acclaim and earned Faist a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. He also received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program for their appearance on You Will Be Found on The Today Show, as well as his cast members. Faist, a suicidal high school student, said he "read stories by real survivors" on a website, www.livethroughthis.org. I realized that in our culture, there seems to be a general lack of self-love and compassion. When people see the movie, they'll say, 'I am loved.' I'm exactly who I am, and I am plenty." Faist, alongside cast members Ben Levi Ross and Mallory Bechtel, lent his voice for Val Emmich's Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel, a book version of the musical that was published in October 2018.

Faist continued to appear in small independent films based on Our Time, I Can't Do, and Active Adults over the two years. In a 2017 episode as Glenn Lawrence, he appeared in criminal investigation dramas as well as in the Law & Order Special Victims Unit. He taught Improv and acting exercises in a Broadway Musical Theatre Workshop in October 2017, as well as a Master Class in audition technique and song interpretation. In Montreal, he taught the same class as a freshman.

He appeared in an episode of Deception and appeared in Days of Rage as Spence, a young man torn between causes and women in the Second Stage Theater performance. He also appeared in the horror film Wildling opposite Bel Powley. It premiered at South by Southwest to mixed feedback. Arthur in the small independent drama The Atlantic City Story played him in 2020.

Faist co-starred Dodge Mason in the Amazon's teen drama thriller Panic in 2021. Faist appeared in the New York Times as a tall and lanky figure in the series, "With a slender charisma and a bone structure that seems to have been sculpted with a scythe, the actor could have embarked on Panic." But his sensitivity is closer to that of leading men as Adam Driver, and he modernizes a potentially versatile piece." Despite receiving rave reviews from critics, the series was cancelled after one season. At the 2nd Critics' Choice Super Awards, Faist was nominated for his contribution to the Critics Choice Association in the category Best Actor in an Action Series.

Riff, Tony's best friend and leader of the Jets, appeared in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of West Side Story later this year. The film was a critical success, and some commentators deemed it superior to the 1961 film. Critics are raving over his achievements. "The Washington Post notes Mike Faist's magnetic appearance in this film as "standout" in the West Side Story's highest film critic. "The revelation in this film, on the other hand, is that he is not only a gifted singer and dancer, but also plays Jets gang leader Riff with just the right combination of spiky resentment, hair-trigger rage, and loosening grace," according to its chief film reviewer Ann Hornaday. "But the true revelation of this cast is Faist, a Tony nominee for Dear Evan Hansen, who just pops and bursts as Riff," wrote writer Pete Hammond. We're watching the birth of a true star, the kind of actor you can't get away from. When he was out of the picture, I had a strong sense of sadness. He's riveting." "He really wants to think about economics, politics, culture, and psychoanalysis," Faist screenwriter Tony Kushner says, "and he feeds himself with a certain degree of a great actor." Faist took inspiration from a 1959 Bruce Davidson photography book titled Brooklyn Gang to create a new version of the legendary Jets leader. "You look at those photographs and you see these people, the nihilization that exists, their inability to see into tomorrow, or even today for that matter." "There's something sad about it, as well as carnal, wild, and primal," Faist said. Faist received a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 75th British Academy Film Awards for his work.

Faist will appear in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers as Art, a well-known tennis player facing his rival in February 2022.

Faist writes short stories and has said that learning scripts is critical for an actor. He was instrumental in the creation of the Ohio Artists Gathering, a one-week theatre festival bringing artists from New York and LA and integrating them with local actors, writers, and directors. In 2018, Columbus, Ohio, was the first festival held.

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