An American actor whose maternal line runs back to a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, Joe Manganiello built a career on True Blood, Magic Mike and Justice League before turning toward his Armenian roots, joining the board of the Children of Armenia Fund and making a pilgrimage to Armenia in 2024.
Joseph Michael Manganiello was born on 28 December 1976 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Charles, was born in Massachusetts; his mother, Susan, is of Armenian, Croatian and German descent. He graduated from Mt. Lebanon High School in 1995 and earned a BFA in acting from Carnegie Mellon University in 2000.
His first notable screen role came in Spider-Man (2002), where he played Flash Thompson, followed by a recurring run as Brad Morris on How I Met Your Mother. The part that made him a household name was Alcide Herveaux, the werewolf he played across five seasons of HBO's True Blood. He went on to Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike XXL (2015), Sabotage (2014), an uncredited turn as Deathstroke in Justice League (2017) and Rampage (2018).
Away from acting he directed, produced and financed the documentary La Bare (2014), which won the Triple Threat Award at the Maui International Film Festival, and narrated Pittsburgh is Home: The Story of the Penguins, which took a Mid-Atlantic Emmy in 2017. He is also a serious figure in tabletop gaming: an official Dungeons & Dragons ambassador, writer and consultant whose character Arkhan the Cruel is part of the game's canon. He founded the apparel company Death Saves in 2018, wrote a quest book for Hasbro's HeroQuest remake, and is directing a documentary on the history of the game.
Manganiello's maternal great-grandmother, Terviz "Rose" Darakjian, survived the Armenian Genocide. Her husband and seven of her children were killed. His grandmother, Sirarpi, was born in a refugee camp. He has spoken publicly about this family history as a way of working through generational trauma, and it is the thread that led him back to Armenia.
Manganiello sits on the board of directors of the Children of Armenia Fund, the organisation that builds and runs education and development programmes in rural Armenian villages. He received COAF's Humanitarian Award at the organisation's 20th anniversary gala in New York.
In May 2024 he spent ten days in Armenia at COAF's invitation. He toured the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan and planted a tree at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in honour of Terviz and Sirarpi. He visited COAF's SMART Center in Lori and a Child and Family Center in Armavir, where he sat down to finger-paint with the children, had dinner at the private residence of President Vahagn Khachaturyan, and met Zareh Sinanyan, the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs.
He has since carried that work into Washington, joining the Armenian Assembly of America's 2025 Advocacy Summit and delivering a keynote at the United States Congress commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in 2025.
Joe Manganiello turned a family story into years of work for Armenia. Discover more of the Armenian community.
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