Noah Schnapp

Noah Schnapp was born on October 3, 2004, in New York City and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He became interested in acting after seeing the Broadway musical Annie as a young child. His parents enrolled him in an acting program at Star Kidz with coach Aubrey Lynch, who encouraged him to seek professional opportunities. Schnapp attended Scarsdale High School while working as an actor. He has both American and Canadian citizenship; his father is from Montreal. His early professional career included film, voice acting, and television work before he became widely known through Netflix.

Schnapp made his film debut in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 historical drama Bridge of Spies. He played Roger Donovan, the son of James B. Donovan, the American lawyer portrayed by Tom Hanks. In the same year, Schnapp voiced Charlie Brown in The Peanuts Movie, an animated adaptation of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic-strip characters. The film centers on Charlie Brown’s efforts to gain confidence and attract the attention of the Little Red-Haired Girl. Schnapp provided the voice for the title character, one of the most recognizable figures in American comic history.

His defining role is Will Byers in Stranger Things, the Netflix science-fiction series created by Matt and Ross Duffer. The show began in 2016 with Will’s disappearance in the fictional Indiana town of Hawkins. His friends Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair search for him while encountering Eleven, a girl with psychokinetic abilities. Will is eventually found in the Upside Down, a hostile alternate dimension. Schnapp’s character remains central to later seasons because of his lingering connection to the Upside Down and its supernatural forces.

In the second season, Will experiences possession by the Mind Flayer, and Schnapp’s performance depicts the character’s fear, physical distress, and isolation. Stranger Things became one of Netflix’s best-known original series, and Schnapp received multiple ensemble award nominations with the cast. He also appeared in Waiting for Anya, a 2020 film based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel, playing Jo Lalande. The story is set in Nazi-occupied France and follows efforts to help Jewish children escape across the border into Spain. In 2023, Schnapp publicly came out as gay in a TikTok video, connecting the announcement to fan discussion of Will Byers’s sexuality.