JEFFREY WHITTY is a Tony Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated American playwright, actor and Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

For the stage musical Avenue Q, he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. For his work on the Fox Searchlight film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), he was nominated for the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won numerous awards including the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay, AARP’s Movies for Grownups, the Satellite Awards, and the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Avenue Q was his first produced musical and Can You Ever Forgive Me his first produced screenplay.

Mr. Whitty’s plays include The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler which was commissioned by and received its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in January, 2006; The Plank Project (a parody of documentary theater pieces like The Laramie Project); the multi-play cycle Balls; The Hiding Place, a romantic Manhattan comedy which received its New York debut at the Atlantic Theater Company; the dark comedy Suicide Weather.

Whitty is an occasional actor, having appeared in New York productions of plays by Amy Freed, including The Beard of Avon and Freedomland, as well as small roles in the films Garmento, Lisa Picard is Famous, and a cameo in Shortbus. Among his theatrical credits include stints at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Philadelphia Theatre Company, and Playwrights Horizons and New York Theatre Workshop in New York City. In 2012 for a 25-performance run he played the titular role in his own The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler in a production by New York company Exit, Pursued by a Bear, with Billy Porter playing the co-leading role of Mammy. Both roles had been created for and played by women until this production.

His older brother George Whitty is a noted jazz musician and producer, and the winner of multiple Grammy and Emmy Awards. Jeff Whitty now lives in West Hollywood, California.