Nathan Lee Graham, the Grammy winner who spent twenty years waiting for his name above the title

Nathan Lee Graham

Photo via The Movie Database (TMDB)

Born	September 9, 1968 St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Occupation	Actor, Singer
Known for	Hitch, Zoolander, Sweet Home Alabama
Awards	Grammy · Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle · IRNE · Critics' Choice · Lucille Lortel Award nomination · Drama League Award nomination, 2008 (Wig Out!) · José Esteban Muñoz Award, CLAGS/CUNY, 2017 · HRC Visibility · Out100, 2025

There is a specific kind of actor that Hollywood does not quite know what to do with: technically superior, visually distinctive, capable of restructuring the entire gravitational field of a scene — and almost always cast third or fourth. Nathan Lee Graham has occupied that position with such consistency, and such evident pleasure, that it begins to look like a choice rather than a circumstance. He made Todd, the neurotic assistant-to-the-villain in Zoolander, the most-remembered character in a film about male models. He played Hermes in the national tour of Hadestown with what critics described as a more “showy and mannered” interpretation than his predecessor André De Shields — a judgment that missed the point. That’s the style. That’s been the whole project.

Graham was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent formative years divided between that city and Los Angeles — a bicoastal education in American performance even before he attended Webster University’s Sargent Conservatory, where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre. The conservatory gave him a mentor in Byron Grant, then head of the musical theatre department, who left him with advice Graham has cited in interviews for three decades: show up on time, know your lines, and don’t be an asshole. He arrived in New York determined not to be a star but to be a “working actor” — a phrase he has used without apology, and which the arc of his career now makes sound prophetic.

His Broadway debut came with the original cast of Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party in 2000, a production that ran fewer than two months but collected Tony and Grammy nominations and allowed Graham to share the stage with Eartha Kitt. Ben Stiller was in the audience at a final performance. The next day, Graham was cast as Todd in Zoolander. The film opened in 2001 to mixed reviews and immediate cult traction — Todd’s combination of utter devotion and barely concealed contempt for everyone around him became one of the more precisely observed comedy performances of the decade. Graham reprised the role in Zoolander 2 fifteen years later with no apparent rust.

Between those two films, the career spread across registers. He played Frederick Montana opposite Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama (2002) and Geoff, the dating coach’s colleague, alongside Will Smith in Hitch (2005). On stage, he originated Miss Understanding in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical on Broadway in 2011, a role he had first played in the pre-Broadway Toronto run. Off-Broadway, he created Willie in The View UpStairs (2017, Lucille Lortel nomination) and Rey-Rey in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Wig Out! (2008, Drama League nomination), both original productions. The origination record was the measure of his presence — directors kept trusting him with new characters.

The Grammy arrived in 2005, improbably: Best Classical Album for Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a William Bolcom song cycle for which Graham served as a featured soloist. It remains perhaps the most unexpected item on a CV full of unexpected items. He has also received the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award and the José Esteban Muñoz Award from CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY — recognition of his advocacy as, in his own words, “a very proud Black gay man.”

The question of scale has always followed Graham’s career. Supporting roles in major films, leading roles in Off-Broadway productions, recurring parts in network TV comedies. When Mid-Century Modern premiered on Hulu in March 2025 — Graham as Arthur Broussard, a Black gay man rebuilding his life in Palm Springs alongside Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer after the death of his husband — it was the first time a major streaming service had placed him at the center of something. The show received warm reviews, an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a Critics Choice Vanguard Award for Graham. Hulu cancelled it after one season, in September 2025. The question of what a Graham-fronted show could sustain remains open.

He followed Mid-Century Modern with the Marquis in the Classic Stage Company’s production of The Baker’s Wife (October–December 2025), opposite Ariana DeBose and Scott Bakula — a Stephen Schwartz score, a role he described as “so fun,” and reviews that noted his precise lascivious energy. His 2025 Out100 listing documented a year in which visibility and cancellation arrived in the same breath. In June 2026, he performed at Night of a Thousand Judys at Joe’s Pub, the annual Pride concert benefiting the Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBTQ+ youth.

What comes next is genuinely open. His stage relationships remain active across Broadway and Off-Broadway; his screen projects after Mid-Century Modern’s cancellation are unannounced. The working actor is still working.