1. Melissa Marie Benoist is an American actress and singer.
38 Facts About Melissa Benoist
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Melissa Benoist's first major role was Marley Rose on the Fox musical comedy drama Glee, in which she was a series regular during the fifth season.
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Melissa Benoist portrayed the wife of cult leader David Koresh on the Paramount Network miniseries Waco.
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On stage, Melissa Benoist made her Broadway debut in 2018 as Carole King in the jukebox musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
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Melissa Benoist was born in Houston, Texas, to Julie and Jim Melissa Benoist, a physician.
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Melissa Benoist has two sisters: Jessica, a novelist, and Kristina, an ecological scientist, and five half-siblings from her father's remarriage.
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Melissa Benoist was raised mostly by her mother in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, after her parents' separation.
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Melissa Benoist started dance classes at the age of three in 1992, focusing on jazz, ballet, and tap.
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Melissa Benoist performed locally in a number of theatrical productions, including A Month in the Country, Cinderella, A Chorus Line, and Bye Bye Birdie at the Town Hall Arts Center, a professional theatre located in the Denver metro area.
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Melissa Benoist graduated from Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, in 2007, and then moved to New York City to pursue a career in musical theatre.
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Melissa Benoist initially attended Marymount Manhattan College for the BFA musical theatre program but in her sophomore year, she switched majors to theatre, due to her admiration for 19th-century Russian plays.
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Melissa Benoist graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts in 2011.
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Melissa Benoist played Kelly in the 2011 Goodspeed Musicals theatrical production of The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown by Bree Lowdermilk and Kait Kerrigan at the Norma Terris Theatre.
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Melissa Benoist portrayed Marley Rose on the fourth and fifth seasons of Glee.
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Melissa Benoist's first performance was a duet of "New York State of Mind" with Lea Michele, during the first episode of season 4.
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Melissa Benoist played Nicole in Damien Chazelle's 2014 independent drama film Whiplash, which won top prizes at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
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Melissa Benoist had a role in the 2015 film Danny Collins.
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Melissa Benoist played the part of Jamie, a desk clerk at a hotel frequented by one of Jamie's all-time favorite rock stars.
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That same year, Melissa Benoist played Becky Thatcher in Band of Robbers, a modern-day retelling of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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In May 2015, it was announced that Melissa Benoist would be playing Lorelai in the film Low Riders, replacing Lily Collins and Nicola Peltz, who were in talks for the role previously.
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Melissa Benoist became the first woman to lead a prime time superhero TV series since Wonder Woman went off the air in 1979 and Lindsay Wagner's The Bionic Woman in 1978.
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Melissa Benoist was reportedly the first actress looked at for the role.
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Melissa Benoist generally received positive reviews for her portrayal of Kara Zor-El.
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Melissa Benoist reprised her role as Earth-X's Supergirl doppelganger Overgirl in the CW Seed animated series Freedom Fighters: The Ray.
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In May 2016, Melissa Benoist was cast as Katherine Russell, the widow of deceased Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in Peter Berg's drama film Patriots Day.
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On May 7,2018, it was announced that Melissa Benoist would be playing the titular character in the Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, which marked her Broadway debut for a limited run from June 7 through August 4,2018.
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Melissa Benoist will serve as an executive producer for the series.
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Melissa Benoist has a tattoo of a bicycle on her left foot.
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Melissa Benoist commented that they had been married "longer than anybody knows", with some sources claiming that the couple actually wed the same year of their engagement in 2013.
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Also in 2015, Melissa Benoist suffered an injury that tore her iris.
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In November 2019, Melissa Benoist shared an Instagram video chronicling her experience as a survivor of domestic violence in order to raise awareness.
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Melissa Benoist revealed that the injury to her iris was due to an iPhone being thrown at her during a domestic dispute, in a relationship marked by repeated abuse.
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Melissa Benoist stated in her video that she had experienced extreme control, manipulation, and cycles of severe violence including being slapped, punched, shoved into a wall, dragged by her hair, and choked during the relationship.
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Melissa Benoist stated that she had physically assaulted him at other times, resulting in injury.
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Melissa Benoist previously stated in her original video that she began fighting back in defense against Jenner's attacks during the relationship.
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Melissa Benoist has discussed healing from the trauma of the relationship and stated that doing EMDR therapy saved her life.
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In 2016, Melissa Benoist met Chris Wood when he was cast as Mon-El in the second season of Supergirl, and their romantic relationship was confirmed in 2017.
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Melissa Benoist said that Wood's words encouraged her to share her own issues with depression with others.