Casey Likes Actor Bio: Broadway Roles, Movies & More

If you've spent any time around Broadway lately — or scrolled past clips of Back to the Future: The Musical or Heathers on social media — you've probably run into the name Casey Likes. He's become one of those actors people start tracking, the way you do when you sense someone's only getting started. I've been following his career for a while now, and what stands out to me isn't just how talented he is. It's how deliberate every step of his career has felt. Here's a full Casey Likes actor bio that walks through where he came from, what he's done, and where he's headed next.

Who Is Casey Likes, Really?

Casey Likes was born on December 25, 2001, and grew up in Chandler, Arizona. Performing wasn't some random hobby he stumbled into — it was basically the family business. His mom, Stephanie Likes, spent years on Broadway and on national tours performing in Les Misérables, and she later became his theatre teacher in high school. Think about that for a second: learning the craft you love from your own mother, in your own school. That's not a typical setup, and Casey has talked about how much it shaped him.

He's also mentioned being "the kid from the talent shows" growing up — the one who was always looking for a stage, even before he had a real one. School and community theatre came first, but it didn't take long for people to notice he had something more than just enthusiasm.

He's part of a small but growing group of young performers moving comfortably between stage and screen — actors like Gabriel LaBelle, who's built a similar kind of range — and it's worth watching how each of them carves out their own lane.

The Jimmy Awards and the Break That Started It All

Casey's senior year at Chandler High School is where things really shifted. He played Jean Valjean in his school's production of Les Misérables, and that performance earned him Best Lead Male at the 2019 ASU Gammage High School Musical Theatre Awards.

That win sent him to the Jimmy Awards in New York City — basically the national championship of high school musical theatre, where top performers from across the country compete and get seen by people in the industry who matter. Casey made it all the way to the final eight.

That one trip changed everything. Almost immediately after, he was cast in his first professional role. It's a clean, almost cinematic chain of events: one school production, one regional award, one national competition, and suddenly a teenager from Arizona is stepping into professional theatre.

From High School to the Old Globe: The Almost Famous Break

That first professional role was William Miller in the musical adaptation of Almost Famous at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 2019. There's something almost too fitting about it — William Miller is a teenager swept into the world of rock journalism, and Casey was a teenager getting swept into professional theatre at nearly the same moment. He's said he only attended one day of his actual senior year before leaving to start the show.

When Almost Famous transferred to Broadway in late 2022, Casey came with it, reprising the role at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. That run earned him the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut in 2023. It wasn't just a lucky break — a lot of that preparation traces back to the training and mentorship he got from his mother during those high school years.

Broadway Breakthroughs: From Back to the Future to Heathers

Right around when Almost Famous was closing, Casey landed another huge role: Marty McFly in Back to the Future: The Musical at the Winter Garden Theatre. He originated the role on Broadway from June 2023 until the show closed in January 2025, and it earned him an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Musical. Stepping into a role this recognizable is risky — people have decades of nostalgia tied up in Marty McFly — but he managed to make it feel like his own.

More recently, he played J.D. in the off-Broadway revival of Heathers: The Musical at New World Stages, running from June 2025 to April 2026. Fans of the show have been vocal about how much they'll miss him in the role, with plenty of comments online about how he and his castmates brought something special to the production. He left a real mark on that community.

Beyond the Stage: Film, Music, and Directing

Casey hasn't limited himself to theatre, and honestly, that's part of what makes his career interesting to follow. On screen, he's taken on a handful of very different roles:

Gene Simmons in the Neil Bogart biopic Spinning Gold (2023)
Richie Shepard in the MGM horror film Dark Harvest (2023)
Brian Moses in Crypt TV's web series The Birch (2021)

His film résumé actually goes back further than most people realize. He had early roles in Everything Must Go (2010) and Cowboys vs. Vampires (2010), and later appeared in Krampus: Origins (2018). He also sang "Wayfaring Stranger" for the Prime Video action film Hellfire, alongside a cast that includes Stephen Lang, Dolph Lundgren, and Harvey Keitel — and he had a role in Acts of Crime, directed by Sam Esmail.

There's a musical side to his career, too. He sang the role of Jesse on Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2024 concept album Warriors — worth checking out if you didn't already know he had a recording career on top of everything else.

He's also been moving behind the camera. In 2021, he wrote, directed, and starred in a short film called Thespians. A year before that, he wrote, directed, produced, and shot another short, I Got You (2020) — about as hands-on as filmmaking gets. In April 2025, he directed and starred as Melchior Gabor in Spring Awakening at Greasepaint Youtheatre in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's also performed a solo cabaret show, Back to the Past, at 54 Below in New York. Put it all together, and directing clearly isn't a side hobby for him — it's a real part of where his career is heading.

It's a similar kind of multi-hyphenate path you see in performers like Summer H. Howell, who's also building a career across mediums instead of sticking to just one lane.

The Person Behind the Performances

In interviews, Casey comes across as thoughtful, not rehearsed. He's described his life after high school as an education in itself — he never went to college, and everything since then has been learning on the job, about the work and about himself.

He's also talked about a personal habit that keeps him grounded: "I think about my final hospital bed a lot," he's said, using that thought to ask himself whether he'd regret not taking a particular leap. He's also been honest about the pressure that comes with chasing a dream — once it comes true, he's said, you end up carrying a kind of responsibility toward it.

That sense of responsibility seems to extend to mentoring, too. He recently led a sold-out Musical Theatre Masterclass for Broadway Workshop, working with students aged 12 to 19 on audition technique and song interpretation. There's something nice about that — a guy who was once in those students' shoes now showing up to help the next group find their footing.

He's also shown up for causes outside his own résumé. Casey and his family appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere of Kids Like Me, a documentary focused on authentic disability representation. It's a small detail in the bigger picture of his career, but it adds a layer to who he is beyond the stage credits.

What's Next for Casey Likes?

He's set to appear in the TV series Sheriff Country, and right now he's starring as Jack Kelly in the Muny's production of Disney's Newsies in St. Louis, running July 16–22. That run carries a bit of extra weight, too — Newsies hasn't been staged at the Muny since 2017, and this production also marks Casey's Muny debut.

If this is the kind of career you enjoy following — young performers stacking up credits across stage, screen, and music — it's worth keeping an eye on other names doing the same, like Stephanie Sarkisian, who's carving out her own path in the industry.

Final Thoughts

Casey Likes' career so far reads less like a lucky streak and more like someone who keeps showing up prepared whenever an opportunity opens up. From a high school production of Les Misérables to leading roles on Broadway, off-Broadway, film, and now directing, he's covered a lot of ground in just a few years. Whatever comes next, his track record so far makes it worth paying attention to.

Frequently Asked Questions

How old is Casey Likes, and where is he from?

He was born on December 25, 2001, and grew up in Chandler, Arizona.

What Broadway roles has Casey Likes played?

He's played William Miller in Almost Famous, Marty McFly in Back to the Future: The Musical, and J.D. in the off-Broadway run of Heathers: The Musical.