Justin Louis Baldoni is an American actor, director, and filmmaker best known for portraying Rafael Solano on The CW satirical romantic dramedy Jane the Virgin.
Early life
Baldoni was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in Medford, Oregon, the son of Sharon and Sam Baldoni. His mother is from a Jewish family and his father is of Italian ancestry. Baldoni's parents joined the Baháʼí Faith, which Baldoni practices devoutly. Baldoni played soccer and ran track in 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.
Career
In 2008, Baldoni wrote, produced, and directed his first music video that was selected and won him his first "Audience Choice Award" at Dawn Breakers International Film Festival. In 2012, Baldoni created one of the most-watched digital documentary series in history, My Last Days, a show about living – as told by the dying. The second season of My Last Days aired on CW and third season was released in the winter of 2018. On the heels of that success Baldoni founded Wayfarer Entertainment, a digital media studio focused on disruptive inspiration.. In December 2018, Baldoni spoke at the annual End Well Symposium about why he believes that thinking about our death can help us live better. In 2014, Baldoni started playing Rafael Solano in the CW show Jane the Virgin and in May 2016 he launched a time-lapse video app for pregnant women and new moms called Belly Bump. In July 2017, Variety announced that Baldoni was developing a male talk show through his media company Wayfarer Entertainment. The show, entitled Man Enough, is described as a disruptive panel series that explores what it means to be a man today. In an interview, Baldoni described the reason he created the show. "Man Enough really came about because I wanted to take a dive into what it really means to be a man, and this question of 'do we have it right?'" The show includes prominent men like Matt McGorry and Javier Muñoz. In August 2017, TED announced Baldoni would be a speaker at the annual TEDWomen Conference. Baldoni directed and produced CBS Films' Five Feet Apart, starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson, and based on an original script by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis. The film was released on March 15, 2019, and chronicles the lives of two teenagers living with cystic fibrosis. He has directed and produced a film on the life of musician Zach Sobiech with Warner Bros. On May 14, 2020, it was announced that Disney+ acquired distribution rights to the film from Warner Bros., in light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the film industry. It is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2020. He is also scheduled to direct and produce It Ends with Us is based on novel with the same name by Colleen Hoover.
Wayfarer Entertainment
Baldoni founded a production company with Ahmed Musiol called Wayfarer Entertainment that produces television, films, and digital content. In 2019, Wayfarer sold majority stake setting up the $25M content fund.
Personal life
After over a year of dating, Baldoni married Swedish actress Emily Baldoni in July 2013 in Corona, California. They have a daughter, Maia, who was born in June 2015 and a son named Maxwell, who was born in 2017.
