A trained Broadway tenor wandered into a haunted house and never came back out.
At a glance
- Known for
- Ed Warren in The Conjuring franchise, Josh Lambert in Insidious
- Before fame
- Two Tony nominations before turning 30
- Off-screen
- Runs a family charity band called The Wilson Van in New Jersey
Rise to Fame
Two Tony nominations by age 29 is the kind of start that usually leads to a career in prestige drama. He got the first for The Full Monty in 2000, the second for Oklahoma! a year and a half later, and then HBO cast him as a closeted Mormon in Angels in America, which won 11 Emmys and got him Golden Globe and Emmy nominations of his own.
The indie detour that followed was stranger. Hard Candy had him playing a suspected predator opposite Elliot Page in a two-hander shot in under three weeks. Little Children put him next to Kate Winslet in a Todd Field film that pulled three Oscar nominations. Both roles traded on his ability to play men who look trustworthy and aren't, a skill set that turned out to be worth more to horror than to prestige film. James Wan noticed.
In the Spotlight
The Conjuring franchise has grossed over $2.4 billion worldwide, and he's been in all four main entries as Ed Warren alongside Vera Farmiga. Last Rites opened to $83 million domestically in 2025, a franchise record, and finished its run near $500 million globally. The Insidious series adds another $730 million. Between the two franchises, he's anchored more than $3 billion in horror box office, a number that makes the "Scream King" label feel like an understatement.
He made his directorial debut with Insidious: The Red Door in 2023, turning a $16 million budget into $189 million worldwide. He's now cast as Abby's father in The Last of Us Season 3 for HBO, a full-circle return to prestige television. Whether he stays is another question. The haunted houses pay better.
Side Notes
His mother was a professional singer and voice teacher, his father a news anchor. That combination, performance plus composure, basically describes his entire screen presence. He sang his own vocals as Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera and still performs at fundraising concerts in Montclair, New Jersey, where he settled with his family in 2011.
He married actress Dagmara Dominczyk, who came to the U.S. from Poland as a child when her parents fled over their ties to the Solidarity movement. They met at Carnegie Mellon in the '90s, split after graduation, and reconnected a decade later. Their fake marriage on screen (he's joked that his partnership with Vera Farmiga "has lasted longer than many real ones") somehow became the more famous relationship.