Gaten Matarazzo

Intro

Gaten Matarazzo is an American actor and singer whose stage career began before his television breakthrough as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things. His credits move between large musical ensembles, a continuing screen character and animated storytelling. That background helps explain why a career often associated with one television series also includes Stephen Sondheim musicals and a return to Broadway after international recognition. The stage and screen credits are complementary parts of his work, with singing, spoken dialogue and physical presence taking different proportions in each setting.

Career snapshot

His early Broadway work included Benji in Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Gavroche in Les Miserables. The Broadway League's database distinguishes alternate and replacement assignments from the dates of an entire production, an important distinction when tracing a child's stage career. Matarazzo also performed Gavroche in the touring production. These were professional musical-theatre roles before Stranger Things introduced him to a much larger audience. They required him to work inside established companies and to sustain a character in live performance rather than relying on the selected takes of a filmed scene.

The entry point

Stranger Things cast him as Dustin Henderson, one of the central friends in Hawkins. Dustin's enthusiasm for science and the group's shared interests helps shape the series' mixture of adventure, humor and danger. His friendships extend beyond the original Party, including his memorable partnership with Steve Harrington. Matarazzo's performance gives the character both comic energy and real investment in the people around him. The role develops over a continuing series, so viewers encounter Dustin through changing loyalties and losses as well as through the jokes and discoveries that first define him.

Screen identity and style

Theatre remained part of Matarazzo's working life after the show's success. In 2019 he played Jack in Into the Woods at the Hollywood Bowl. The casting company's production record identifies the role and the particular staging, rather than presenting it as a Broadway appearance. Jack's story begins with a cow and a journey up a beanstalk, then becomes entangled with the consequences facing the musical's other fairy-tale characters. For a performer, Sondheim's score and James Lapine's story require comedy and uncertainty to coexist within the same character.

Collaborations and patterns

Matarazzo returned to Broadway as Jared Kleinman in Dear Evan Hansen in July 2022. In 2023 he played Tobias Ragg in the revival of Sweeney Todd, with his engagement ending that November. These are distinct assignments: Jared belongs to a contemporary story of teenage relationships and deception, while Tobias inhabits the dark world of Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical thriller. The sequence shows a performer continuing to pursue demanding stage material alongside television, rather than treating his earlier musical work as a chapter that ended when he became widely recognized on screen.

Era reflection

He also hosted and executive-produced Prank Encounters, Netflix's hidden-camera series built around elaborate frightening scenarios. Hosting places him in a different relationship to the audience from playing Dustin. In animation, he voiced Boris in the 2022 film My Father's Dragon, directed by Nora Twomey. Producer Mockingbird Pictures identifies Jacob Tremblay as Elmer Elevator and Matarazzo as the dragon the boy encounters. The film draws on Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book, creating another ensemble in which the actors' voices become part of an illustrated world rather than appearing as their own physical likenesses.

Legacy and rediscovery

The two public-appearance photographs in this gallery document different years of Matarazzo's association with Stranger Things. Gage Skidmore's 2017 San Diego Comic-Con portrait is paired with a February 2024 MEGACON Orlando panel that also includes Grace Van Dien and Finn Wolfhard. They are event photographs, not costume or production stills. A fuller introduction to his career can place Dustin beside Boris and the stage roles of Jack, Jared and Tobias, showing how a recognizable screen performer continues to work across several forms of performance.

Selected screen roles

• Stranger Things: Dustin Henderson — Television series
• Into the Woods: Jack — Hollywood Bowl, 2019
• Dear Evan Hansen: Jared Kleinman — Broadway, 2022
• Sweeney Todd: Tobias Ragg — Broadway, 2023
• My Father's Dragon: Boris (voice) — 2022 animated film

A career in pictures

Distinct public-appearance photographs document Gaten Matarazzo in 2017 and 2024.

At San Diego Comic-Con (2017)

Gaten Matarazzo at a public panel

Photographed by Gage Skidmore on July 22, 2017.

Stranger Things panel at MEGACON (2024)

Grace Van Dien, Gaten Matarazzo and Finn Wolfhard

Photographed at MEGACON Orlando on February 4, 2024; a public appearance, not a production still.

Rewatch notes

• Matarazzo plays Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things.
• He played Jack at the Hollywood Bowl in 2019.
• He voices Boris in My Father's Dragon.