Michael Urie

Born on Aug. 8, 1980 in Dallas, TX, Michael Urie was raised in the nearby suburb of Plano, where he attended Plano Senior High School. While there, he played in the marching band and was heavily involved in his school's speech and drama program. After a starring role in the school's production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Urie fell in love with theater. Shortly after high school, he trained at the prestigious Quad C Theatre where he appeared in student productions of "Sylvia" (1998) and "Locked Away" (1999). While attending the famed Juilliard School, he starred in the world premiere of "Love and Happiness" in 2001, portraying a 16-year-old who plots to get rid of his mother's lover. Before his 2003 graduation, Urie received many honors during his time at Juilliard, including The John Houseman prize for Excellence in Classical Theatre and The Laura Pels award for a career in theater. Prior to that, he won a Dramatic Interpretation award at the National Forensic League National Tournament in St. Louis, MO for "Confessions of a Nightingale" (1998). Urie made his first TV appearance on MTV's provocative and hormonally-charged nighttime series, "Undressed" (1999-2002), on which he played Justin during the show's sixth and final season. In 2005, Urie starred in the stage play "WTC View," a story about a young New Yorker living in SoHo who undergoes emotional struggles in the weeks following the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. Two years later, Urie was back on the theater stage, playing Horatio in a summer production of "Hamlet" by the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, CA. Not wasting any time making a name for himself, Urie joined the cast of "Ugly Betty" - inspired by a Spanish-language telenovela and produced by Salma Hayek - in recurring fashion during its premiere season as Marc, the fashionable and devoted assistant to the show's resident bitch, Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams). Urie and Williams shared plenty of screen time tog