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The Transformation Of Matthew Gray Gubler

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Long before he was diagnosing unsubs on CBS, Matthew Gray Gubler was walking runways for Tommy Hilfiger and Marc Jacobs.

Fifteen years playing Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds made Matthew Gray Gubler one of the most recognizable faces on network television, but the actor’s path there ran through a modeling contract, a Wes Anderson internship, and a childhood spent drawing rather than socializing. He came out the other side as an actor, director, voice performer, and published author — a résumé that started taking shape long before he ever read a line as an FBI profiler.

• Gubler signed with DNA Model Management while attending NYU and eventually ranked among models.com’s top 50 male models, booking campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger and Marc Jacobs.
• Interning for director Wes Anderson in 2004, Gubler was encouraged to audition for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and landed the role of Nico the intern, later producing his own behind-the-scenes documentary about the experience.
• He played Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds for all 15 seasons through 2020, directed multiple episodes of the series, voiced Simon Seville in the Alvin and the Chipmunks films, and published the bestselling children’s book Rumple Buttercup in 2019.

From Las Vegas Academy to NYU Tisch

Gubler was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, to attorney John Gubler and political consultant Marilyn Kelch Gubler. He attended the Las Vegas Academy before heading east to study film directing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the same program that has churned out a string of working directors and actors. The plan, by his own account of those years, was to end up behind the camera — not in front of it.

A Model Discovered on Campus

While he was still enrolled at NYU, Gubler was scouted and signed by DNA Model Management, which put him on campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs, and other major labels. He eventually cracked models.com’s ranking of the top 50 male models in the world, a level of visibility that put him in rooms he wouldn’t have reached through film school alone. The industry that produced him runs on the same star-making pipeline covered in what the winners of America’s Next Top Model look like today, though Gubler’s version of that path bent toward acting rather than the runway long-term.

Wes Anderson Opens the Door

In 2004, Gubler was interning for director Wes Anderson when Anderson pushed him to audition for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He landed the part of Nico the intern and turned the experience into his own project, producing the behind-the-scenes documentary Matthew Gray Gubler’s Life Aquatic Intern Journal.

Anderson encouraged Gubler to audition — and the intern ended up on screen instead of just behind the camera.

Fifteen Seasons as Dr. Spencer Reid

In 2005, Gubler landed the role that would define his television career: Dr. Spencer Reid, the eccentric, hyper-verbal FBI profiler on CBS’s Criminal Minds. He stayed with the character for the show’s entire original 15-season run, which wrapped in 2020, making him one of only a handful of cast members who never left the series. Along the way he stepped behind the camera himself, directing multiple episodes rather than staying strictly in front of it — a dual role not unlike the creative arc traced in the transformation of Jason Momoa from childhood to 42, another actor whose career expanded well past his breakout part.

Director, Voice Actor, Author

Off the Criminal Minds set, Gubler voiced Simon Seville across the Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise and kept building out his work as a painter and writer. In 2019, he published the children’s book Rumple Buttercup, which became a bestseller and gave him a creative outlet entirely separate from either acting or modeling.