Chord Overstreet

Chord Overstreet is an American actor, singer and musician, best known for his role as Sam Evans on the television series Glee.

Overstreet was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to make-up artist Julie Miller and country music singer-songwriter Paul Overstreet. He has an older brother, Nash, who plays guitar in the band Hot Chelle Rae, an older sister, Summer, and three younger sisters, Harmony, Skye and Charity. He is of German, Irish, English, and "a little bit of Native American" descent. He was named after the musical term of the same name. Overstreet was raised on a farm outside of Nashville. Encouraged by his parents to pursue music, he started playing the mandolin at an early age, and moved on to the drums, flute, piano, and guitar. He is also a songwriter. In his teenage years, he modeled for advertisements for Famous Footwear and Gap.

Overstreet began to pursue his passion of performing after his high school graduation in 2007. After two unsuccessful years, Overstreet started his acting career on the web series Private, as Josh Hollis. He was also featured in an episode of iCarly iSpeed Date (for a few minutes) and the unaired pilot of No Ordinary Family. His first film role was that of Teenage Boy in the 2009 thriller The Hole, and he starred in the 2011 film A Warrior's Heart as Dupree, alongside Ashley Greene and Kellan Lutz.

Overstreet plays the character of Sam Evans, a transfer student and athlete, on the television show Glee. He landed the role after auditioning with Commodores' "Easy" and Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want to Be". He later sang "Billionaire" by Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars as a studio test, and eventually sang this in the season premiere "Audition", along with "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison. He played the role of Rocky in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show-themed episode "The Rocky Horror Glee Show".

On April 21, 2011, the video for Hot Chelle Rae's "Tonight Tonight?" was released on YouTube and featured a series of cameos of Overstreet alternately making out with a girl (whom he stole from the lead singer) on an office copier, DJing at a club, then playing guitar and mugging for the crowd with his brother, bandmember Nash.

On July 1, 2011, TVLine's Michael Ausiello broke the news that Overstreet's contract option to become a series regular on Glee had not been picked up for season 3, but that he could possibly come back as an occasional guest star. In reaction to the announcement, fans launched a campaign to promote Overstreet's cover of "Billionaire" and various tags related to the actor, most notably "#dontcutthechord", began trending on Twitter. The song made its way into the iTunes Top 5 "Glee" charts during the campaign.

At the 2011 Comic-Con event, Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk reported that they had offered Overstreet a ten-episode deal with a possibility to become a series regular at mid-season, but that Overstreet had declined the option. Overstreet later stated to Ausiello during an interview that he had decided to leave the show to focus on his music career, explaining, "They offered me the chance to come back for a few episodes, but there was nothing guaranteed so I decided to dive into the music thing."

It was reported on October 18, 2011, and confirmed by series co-creator Ryan Murphy six days later, that Overstreet would be returning to Glee as a recurring character starting with the season's eighth episode. That episode, "Hold On to Sixteen", which featured Overstreet's character Sam, aired on December 6, 2011. On July 23, it was confirmed that Overstreet will be a series regular for the fourth season of Glee.