Barrett Foa

Barrett's older brother by four years, Justin, is the fifth generation owner and CEO of Foa & Son, an international insurance brokerage firm established in 1861; and is married to professor and historian of Christianity Candida Moss.

Barrett Conrad Foa (born September 18, 1977) is an American singer, dancer, and actor, with over a decade in Broadway theatre shows.

He has played many leading characters in off-Broadway and regional theatre productions.

He has appeared in multiple Broadway shows, including Mamma Mia! and as Princeton and Rod in Avenue Q.

Foa's view of the performing arts expanded greatly when he attended Interlochen Center for the Arts—a Northern Michigan prestigious school for music, dance, writing, film, visual arts and theater—during his four summers of high school in the 1990s.

According to Foa, his experience at Interlochen “instilled the passion and the drive that I feel toward my craft and my business.

Finally, I was surrounded by people who were obsessed with something that no else back home even understood.

I got excited and I got voracious.

'Other weirdos like me!' I still carry that hunger inside me to this day.” Over many summers, he had featured parts in plays, musicals, and operettas.

Among other skills, he learned to sing in an operatic style for the play "Lend Me a Tenor."

As an alumnus, he set up the Barrett Foa Musical Theatre Scholarship to be given annually to a high school camper studying musical theatre.

Foa received his first paid job at the New London Barn Playhouse, a summer stock theatre in New Hampshire, after an audition at StrawHat Audition in 1995, which he thinks was “instrumental in moving his career forward”.

He was playing an effeminate version of evil Mordred in Camelot.

He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (UMich), earning his bachelor in fine arts (BFA) in Musical Theatre in 1999.

He kept doing summer stock through his college years and had earned his Equity card by the time he got his bachelor's degree.

During his junior year, he studied acting and William Shakespeare for a semester at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

After graduating from college, he returned to New York City.

Foa got his break playing Jesus in the 2000 off-Broadway revival of the musical Godspell for the 30th anniversary.

He is on the cast album as well.

His Broadway theatre debut was in 2001 as a cast member in the original production of Mamma Mia!, a musical based on 22 pop songs of ABBA.

After months with the show, Foa left to accept a three-month job at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California, where he created the lead role in a musical called Kept with music by Henry Kreiger and lyrics by Bill Russell.

After playing Matt in The Fantasticks at The Muny in St. Louis, Foa was picked to play Claudio in a dual production of Much Ado About Nothing at Hartford Stage and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. In 2003 Foa was in the Cupid and Psyche-inspired four person, Off-broadway show of the same name which was also an updated Greek mythology and comedy.

He was also in the musical Camelot as the evil Mordred portrayed with a thick Scottish burr who is a punk bastard.

From 2009 to 2021, he portrayed Eric Beale on the military police procedural NCIS: Los Angeles.

Barrett Conrad Foa was born and raised in Manhattan, New York.

He is the son of Conrad Foa, an international insurance broker, former musician and Army veteran, and mother Linda Rimanich, an executive, editor and author.

Foa's parents are both Manhattan natives, community and civic activists, philanthropists, and organizers in the Democratic party.

Foa graduated from The Dalton School, a prestigious K-12 college preparatory school in New York City.

His interest in musical theater developed during his high school years.

He was involved with the arts—especially musical theater—as a hobby, “a fun, non-athletic, after-school activity that kept me busy and helped me get a little attention”.

Their mother, Linda, died of breast cancer in June 2016.

Barrett bought an “unconventional architectural” three-story, two bedrooms home in Silver Lake, Los Angeles in 2016, that was just built, for $1.4 million.

In February 2019, Foa publicly came out as gay on social media.

In May 2019, he bought another home, a newly rehabilitated 1950s single-story three bedroom ranch-style structure in the foothills above L.A.’s Beachwood Canyon for $2.09 million.

In addition to various workshops and readings, Foa donates his time and talents to community causes and non-profit theatre companies and organizations, including Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors' Fund.

Foa has played many leading roles in plays and musicals off-Broadway, and in regional theatre.

His regional credits include Sweet Charity, The Music Man, Camelot, ''Pirates!

The Musical, The Lady in Question, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Fantasticks. His off-Broadway credits,, include Buyer & Cellar, The Drunken City, Godspell, and Tio Pepe (aka Somewhere'').

Foa is gay, and as of July 2020, single.

He listed it for sale in September 2020 at $1.7 million.