Justin Baldoni

Born: 24 January 1984

Age:

Years Active: 2004-present

Justin Louis Baldoni (born January 24, 1984) is an American actor and director. He is best known for playing Rafael Solano on the CW telenovela Jane the Virgin (2014–2019) and for starring in and directing the romantic drama film It Ends with Us (2024). He has also directed Five Feet Apart (2019) and Clouds (2020).

Baldoni co-founded the production company Wayfarer Studios in 2019. Through his company he has produced and co-hosted the Man Enough podcast. He has also published two books on exploring positive masculinity and overcoming societal expectations of being a man. He is also currently involved in litigation after Blake Lively, who co-starred with him in It Ends with Us, accused him of sexual harassment.

Baldoni was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in Medford, Oregon, to parents Sharon (née Solomon) and Samuel Baldoni. His mother is Jewish, born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents Blanche Katz and Daniel Solomon from Cleveland, Ohio, with roots in Central and Eastern Europe. Baldoni is therefore considered Jewish according to Halakha (Jewish law), as Orthodox Judaism practices matrilineal descent. His maternal grandfather served in the Second World War and Baldoni lost relatives in the Holocaust. His father Sam is from an Italian Catholic background. His paternal grandfather is Louis Baldoni, a former Indiana state senator and Italian immigrant. Baldoni was raised celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah in honor of his Jewish and Catholic grandparents. However, he was raised Baháʼí, practicing the Baháʼí Faith, the faith to which both his parents had converted before he was born. Baldoni has visited Israel several times on Baháʼí pilgrimages.

Baldoni played soccer and ran track while a student at South Medford High School, and was a radio disc jockey at a local top 40 radio station. While moving into a new apartment building, Baldoni met a manager who advised him to pursue a career in acting. He attended college at California State University, Long Beach on a partial athletic scholarship, but later dropped out. In December 2024, Baldoni alleged he had "experienced sexual trauma" in a previous relationship when he was attending university. He said that he "wrestled with that trauma for the rest of my life, because in my head a man can't experience sexual trauma at the hands of a woman."