All About Ben Platt's Parents, Marc and Julie Platt

Ben Platt grew up in quite the musical family.

The Dear Evan Hansen star was born on Sept. 24, 1993, to parents Marc and Julie Platt. Marc, an Academy Award-nominated producer, has had a very storied career, with mega-hits under his belt spanning Broadway to Hollywood — including the likes of Wicked, Legally Blonde, La La Land and many more award-winning productions. He and Julie, a Jewish philanthropist, are college sweethearts.

The longtime couple have passed on their passion for music and theater to their five children, whom they raised in Los Angeles in “a very large, very Jewish, very musical family,” Ben recalled on his 2020 Netflix concert special, Ben Platt Live from Radio City Hall. The family was known as the “Von Platt family singers,” he added.

So who are Ben Platt’s parents? Read on for everything to know about Marc and Julie Platt, from their movie-worthy love story to their successful careers and their tight-knit relationship with The Politician star.

Marc and Julie met during their first week of college

It didn’t take long for Marc and Julie (née Beren) to cross paths at the University of Pennsylvania, where they were both freshmen in 1979. “I walked into a dorm room and met my husband,” she recalled to The Pennsylvania Gazette in 2006 of meeting Marc just days into their first semester.

“I think that every woman has some kind of checklist in her head, hopefully one with shared interests and shared passions,” she explained. “And it became evident to me very quickly that with Marc, I could check off every item on the list.”

The pair formed a quartet dedicated to performing Hebrew songs, and Julie starred as Mrs. Darling in Marc’s production of Peter Pan. “We were best friends. And then we fell in love,” she recalled, noting that they began dating in the spring of their sophomore year.

Two years later, Marc popped the question and the pair got engaged their senior year at Penn’s Hillel.

They share five children together

The couple are proud parents to five children together: sons Jonah, Ben and Henry, as well as daughters Hannah and Sam, all of whom they raised in Los Angeles. While the sisters have kept their lives largely out of the spotlight, all three of the brothers are fairly public-facing, given that the three of them perform together as a band, The Platt Brothers, singing primarily Hebrew songs.

Both Jonah and Henry graduated from their parents’ alma mater, where Henry became an advocate for mental health. Much like Ben, the two of them have also pursued careers in the arts: Jonah starred as Fiyero in Wicked, while Ben has gained social media fame for his musical talents.

Despite their busy careers, Marc and Julie always knew that raising children would be their priority. “Both of us frankly, more than anything, just wanted to be parents,” the proud mom told The Pennsylvania Gazette. “So it may sound like it’s something difficult, but it actually is the most pleasurable part of our lives.”

Marc echoed his wife’s sentiments in an interview with Jewish Journal, telling the outlet, “There’s nothing like my family.”

He continued, “It doesn’t mean I don’t try really hard to be a great producer, and it doesn’t mean I’m not competitive and don’t want to earn Oscar nominations. But the place where I’m happiest and the best is in my home.”

Marc began directing plays in childhood

Marc was born in Pikesville, Maryland, on April 14, 1957, to parents Sue Ellen and Howard Platt. A middle child, he grew up in a conservative Jewish household alongside his older brother Jeffrey and younger sister Wendy, according to Jewish Journal. He attended Pikesville High School, graduating in 1975, before going on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.A. in Sociology and honed his musical talents at the school’s glee club. It’s also where he began directing plays in earnest, after years of helping put on high school productions.

“It sounds silly, I suppose, but a play is a play, whether it’s in your backyard or a high-school stage or in the Quad or on Broadway. When you’re learning in all those environments, it all adds up to helping one become a good storyteller,” he told The Pennsylvania Gazette.

At school, he put on productions in the Quad as a freshman, and helped fix up a basement room into a nightclub-cabaret of sorts, where he’d help organize productions alongside a group of friends every week.

Marc is an award-winning producer

Early on in his career, Marc pivoted from acting to producing, realizing he felt more creatively stimulated by the work behind the scenes.

"I realized being a producer was a very exciting thing. It satisfied my creative needs, it let me be in control, and it allowed me to satisfy the business side that interested me,” he told The Pennsylvania Gazette. “Dealing with lots of people, and having a very large vision of something — I found that more satisfying than being an actor.”

In an effort to gain a leg up on the business side of things, he attended New York University School of Law after graduating from college, going on to work as an attorney in entertainment law for Sam Cohn, a top Hollywood agent at the time. He also interned for two years with famed Broadway producers Elizabeth McCann and Nelle Nugent, who “taught me the Broadway business,” he told the outlet.

Marc went on to land top positions at a number of distribution companies — first, as Vice President at RKO Pictures, and later as President of Orion Pictures and eventually, Universal Studios.

He founded his own production company, Marc Platt Productions, and has earned a slew of awards — one Golden Globe, two Tonys, two Primetime Emmys, and three Academy Award nominations among them. He has been a creative force behind a string of hit movies including Legally Blonde, Sleepless in Seattle, Jerry McGuire, La La Land and dozens more.

But his true pride and joy is the mega-hit Wicked, which he brought to Broadway in 2003, and which has remained one of the top-grossing shows.

Julie has dedicated her career to fundraising for the Jewish community

Born in 1957 in Wichita, Kansas, to Joan Schiff Beren, a highly-regarded philanthropist to Jewish causes, Julie grew up as one of the only Jewish people in her community.

“In my high school graduating class of 671 students, I was the only Jew,” she told Jewish Journal. “But I actually think that when you are from a small town, the necessity to stand up and be counted is even stronger,” she said. “I felt from the beginning that if we Jews didn’t look out for the Jewish community, there wasn’t anybody else to step up. It wasn’t out of a sense of peril; it was a feeling of ‘l’dor v’dor,’ that I was a link in the chain.”

After a stint as a banker following her graduation, Julie has held several prominent positions to help fundraise for Jewish causes and to support Penn alumni. She’s been a member of the Board of Trustees at Penn since 2006 and is the past president of the Penn Alumni Board of Directors. She’s also a Co-Chair of Penn Hillel's National Board of Governors.

More recently, Julie took on the role of chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Federations of North America in 2022.

They’re philanthropists

The theater-loving couple have been longtime benefactors for the University of Pennsylvania, often giving back to the school that first brought them together.

In 2005, they made a substantial donation in order to enhance the university’s performing arts capabilities, and The Platt Student Performing Arts House opened in September 2006, boasting 13,000 square feet of office and performance space.

“Penn’s theater and music programs had a profound impact on our lives, not only in what we learned but also in the fun we had and the friendships we made,” Marc told the University of Pennsylvania Almanac. “So when this opportunity came up, Julie and I looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve enjoyed being benefactors to the University in other areas, but in terms of a very large gift, we couldn’t think of anything better than a student performing-arts center.”

Ben came out to them at age 12

The actor’s coming out story didn’t exactly ruffle any feathers in the Platt household, he recalled in Ben Platt Live from Radio City Hall. During an eighth grade class trip to Israel, Ben felt moved to discuss his sexuality with his parents for the first time after a teacher worried he was being bullied about it and informed him she was going to call them himself.

Instead, he called them from his hotel room in Tel Aviv, explaining he had something important to share.

“And my mom goes, ‘Is this about your sexuality?’ I was like, ‘Let me finish!’ ” he said. “Basically, she said, ‘We know, you spent most of your childhood dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, no one is surprised.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s great.’ ”

He shared that he hopes everyone can have a coming-out story that’s “that much of a nothing,” adding, “Because it doesn’t need to be an event or an announcement.”

They’ve always nurtured Ben’s musical talents

A musical theater kid practically since birth, Ben began performing in early childhood, joining a national tour of Caroline, or Change at age 10. Long before he shot to stardom in 2015 while originating the title role in Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen, his parents were proudly encouraging his love of performing.

“Most kids, when they’re young, want computer games and Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles,” Marc told The New York Times in 2016. “Ben always wanted a clip-on microphone, so he could perform in the backyard, and one year he wanted a fog machine.”

Ben echoed those memories in a separate Times interview, noting that in his youth — much like his father — he “spent a lot of time turning over furniture and trash cans and staging Cats in my backyard.”

Before the concept of “Nepo-Babies” — a.k.a. celebrities with famous parents — went viral, Ben had often opened up about the perks and pitfalls of making a name for himself in an industry where his father’s success follows him at every turn.

“We’ve done as best a job as we can making it clear that I’m earning what I’m earning because of me, and not because of who my father is,” Ben told the Times. “But at the same time, I’m not ignoring things that would be dumb to ignore, like people that I can know through him, and experiences I can have through him, and things that I can learn from him.”

In another Times interview, the actor added that it would be “totally disingenuous” to ignore the advantages that his father’s success has provided him. “But it’s also made me aware of how lucky I am, and how hard I have to work to prove I deserve these opportunities I’ve been given," he said.

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