Chris Perfetti ’11

Originally from Rochester, NY, Chris Perfetti ’11 is a stage and screen actor who’s currently playing the role of teacher Jacob Hill on ABC’s critically acclaimed comedy Abbott Elementary.

In 2023, Perfetti was nominated for the Critics Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and Abbott Elementary won the Peabody Award for Entertainment and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. The cast was nominated for the latter award again in 2024.

He received a Hollywood Critics Association Television Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Broadcast Network or Cable Series, Comedy in 2022 for the role.

Theatre

Perfetti starred in Pasadena Playhouses’ production of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee (2023).

“Chris Perfetti is cynical perfection as wisecracking critic E. K. Hornbeck…”

—artsbeatla.com

In 2022, he starred in the world premiere of King James at Steppenwolf in Chicago, and again at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The Manhattan Theatre Club brought King James to the New York City Center for its New York premiere in May 2023.

“Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti shines in Rajiv Joseph’s new play at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum… Perfetti and [Glenn] Davis are superb, and their chemistry is immediate.”

—Entertainment Weekly (Review of King James)

Broadway

Six Degrees of Separation (2017)

Picnic 

For the role of Charlie in Sons of the Prophet by playwright Stephen Karam, he received a Theatre World Award for Best Debut Performance in an Off-Broadway Play (2011).

Off-Broadway

The Low Road, New York Premiere at the Public Theater (2018)

Ariel in The Tempest at the Delacorte Theater, Shakespeare in the Park Production (2015)

In 2020, he had a recurring role in season two of the CW’s crime drama In the Dark, and is also know for his work on HBO’s Looking and NBC’s Crossbones.