Zach Braff

Zach Braff
Braff at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair party
Born	Zachary Israel Braff (1975-04-06) April 6, 1975 (age 41) South Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1989–present

Zachary Israel "Zach" Braff (born April 6, 1975) is an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for his role as J. D. on the television series Scrubs (2001–2010), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2005.

In 2004, Braff made his directorial debut with Garden State. He returned to his home state New Jersey to shoot the film, which was produced for $2.5 million. The film made over $35 million at the box office and was praised by critics, leading it to gain a cult following. Braff wrote the film, starred in it, and compiled the soundtrack record. He won numerous awards for his directing work, and also won the Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album in 2005. Braff directed his second film, Wish I Was Here (2014), which he partially funded with a Kickstarter campaign.

Braff has also appeared on stage; All New People, which he wrote and starred in, premiered in New York City in 2011 before playing in London's West End, and he played the lead role in a musical adaptation of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway in 2014.

Braff was born in South Orange, New Jersey. His father, Harold Irwin "Hal" Braff, is a trial attorney and sociology professor, and his mother, Anne Brodzinsky (born Anne Hutchinson Maynard), worked as a clinical psychologist. His parents divorced and remarried others during Braff's childhood. One of his siblings, Joshua, is an author. Braff's father was born into a Jewish family, and Braff's mother, originally a Protestant, converted to Judaism before marrying his father. Braff has said that he had a "very strong Conservative/Orthodox upbringing" (he had his bar mitzvah at Oheb Shalom Congregation). In 2005, he stated that he was "not a huge organized religion guy," and in 2013, he said that "the religion doesn’t necessarily work for me," although he identifies as Jewish. Through his mother's New England ancestors, Braff is a ninth cousin of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.