Photo: Gordon Correll / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Penn Badgley fascinates me because his career is essentially one long act of self-subversion. He spent years as Gossip Girl's earnest outsider Dan Humphrey, then took that same wholesome charm and twisted it into Joe Goldberg on You — a performance that works precisely because we instinctively trust his face. That is hard to do, and harder to sustain across multiple seasons. I also appreciate that he came up as a child actor and dabbles in music, which suggests restlessness rather than complacency. Born in 1986, he is entering the stretch of his career where the truly interesting roles arrive, and I suspect his best work is still ahead.
Overview
Penn Dayton Badgley (born November 1, 1986) is an American actor and producer. He is known for his roles as Dan Humphrey in The CW teen drama series Gossip Girl (2007–2012) and Joe Goldberg in the Netflix psychological thriller series You (2018–2025). Badgley came to prominence playing Phillip Chancellor IV on the soap opera The Young and the Restless (2000–2001).
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Penn Badgley
- Name (Japanese)
- ペン・バッジリー
- Reading
- ぺん・ばっじりー
- Born
- November 1, 1986 (age 39)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Scorpio / Tiger
- Origin
- Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- actor / singer / child actor / film actor / television actor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Santa Monica College
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Actor — see all → · Singer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.