who is penn badgley

Penn Badgley is an American actor best known for playing Dan Humphrey in the teen drama series Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in the psychological thriller series You.

Quick Scoop: Who is Penn Badgley?

• Full name: Penn Dayton Badgley.

• Born: November 1, 1986, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

• Main professions: Actor, producer, and musician/podcaster.

• Breakout roles:
  • Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl (2007–2012).

* Joe Goldberg in Netflix’s You (2018–2025).

Why he’s famous

• Gossip Girl made him widely recognizable as the Brooklyn writer “outsider” in an otherwise ultra-privileged Upper East Side world.

• You turned him into a darker pop‑culture figure, as he plays a charming but dangerously obsessive stalker, which sparked a lot of online discussion, memes, and think‑pieces about toxic romance and media crushes.

• Outside TV, he’s appeared in films like:
  • John Tucker Must Die (2006).

* The Stepfather (2009).

* Easy A (2010), as Emma Stone’s love interest.

* Margin Call (2011).

A bit of background

• He split his childhood between Virginia and Washington state and started acting young, including early voice work in Mario Golf 64 and Mario Tennis 64.

• Before his big teen‑drama roles, he appeared in series like The Young and the Restless, The Mountain, and The Bedford Diaries.

What he’s up to lately

• After You, he remains closely associated with that intense lead role and continues to be a recurring topic in online forums whenever people discuss “problematic crushes” on fictional characters.

• He co-hosts the podcast Podcrushed, where he and his cohosts talk with guests about awkward and formative adolescence stories, blending nostalgia with more reflective, personal conversations.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.