Appearances

Title	Role	Year	Approx. Age
Running with Scissors	Augusten Burroughs	2006	20
The Spring	Nick Conway	2000	14
Wide Awake	Joshua A. Beal	1998	12
Jack Frost	Charlie Frost	1998	12

Joseph Michael Cross (born May 28, 1986) is an American movie star who successfully transitioned from child actor to adult actor. Cross was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Maureen, a real estate agent, and Michael J. Cross, who worked in marketing. He has four siblings. Cross grew up in Pelham, New York and attended Pelham Middle School and Pelham Memorial High School. For his undergraduate studies, Cross transferred from Hartford's Trinity College to Columbia University.

Joseph Cross burst upon the scene and quickly became one of Hollywood's most sought-after actors. His natural talent and raw energy are quickly earning him a reputation as one of the most promising young thespians. As a child actor, Cross appeared in the 1997 Disney Channel Original Movie Northern Lights and Hollywood films Desperate Measures. Joseph made his motion picture debut in M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake (1998) and worked along side Michael Keaton in Jack Frost (1998). Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, he also appeared in several television roles, and played Casey Hughes on As the World Turns between 1999 to 2004.

In 2006, Cross played the young Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, a drama also featuring Annette Bening and Evan Rachel Wood, and appeared as real-life Marine Franklin Sousley in the big-budget Clint Eastwood-directed war film Flags of Our Fathers. Joseph has said that he enjoyed the transition from appearing in Running with Scissors, which he has described as "very character driven and smaller" to the high-profile "epic" Flags of Our Fathers. "Running with Scissors" has been described by media sources as Cross's "breakout performance". Cross was also in Untraceable, with Diane Lane.

His transistion as an adult carried him into the role of gay rights activist Dick Pabich in the 2008 Oscar-nominated biopic Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. He also played John Hay in Lincoln (2012).

Currently a guitarist for the rock band Roostir. His band Roostir was originally called Cock, after the first letters of the members' last names, but school officials deemed the name unacceptable and demanded that the band change its name to play at high school functions.