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Brian d’Arcy James came to many people’s attention with the unearthly beauty of his singing voice in the Off-Broadway musical Floyd Collins and later on Broadway in Titanic.

Since then his stage career has moved easily back and forth from dramas like Time Stands Still and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, to musicals like The Wild Party, The Apple Tree, White Christmas, Next to Normal and Shrek, for which he originated the title role on Broadway.

He also was featured on the TV series “Smash” playing Frank, husband to Debra Messing’s character.

He may seem to have started at the top, but there was a time when James was just another talented teen hoping to get his foot on the bottom rung of the showbiz ladder by picking the right college. Who knows what combination of the right program, the right professors and the right roles will send one on a trajectory to greatness? Knowing that a new crop of students is currently searching for colleges, PlaybillEDU™ is asking Broadway personalities to share their experiences about how they started on the road to where they are today.

PlaybillEDU™ visited James at rehearsal for the Broadway revival of Macbeth, in which he is playing Banquo, and asked him where he went to college and how his experience changed his life.

Visit the PlaybillEDU.com™ pages for the school Brian d’Arcy James attended; or, log in, tell PlaybillEDU your particulars and let us find the ideal program for you from among the 1,000 schools in our database (links are below).

Northwestern: playbilledu.com/school/Northwestern

Guided search: playbilledu.com/search/guidedSearch

Click below to watch the interview with Tony nominee James.