Music Carney started to play guitar at age 12 and three years later he was playing guitar professionally at
B. B. King's night club in Los Angeles. When living in California, Carney released his first EP
Looking Glass in 2004 and promoted it by performing with other musicians, including
Jonny Lang. At age 22 he signed with
Interscope and formed his jazz-infused
rock namesake band, Carney, consisting of Carney (songwriter, vocals and guitar), his brother Zane (guitar), Aiden Moore (bass) and Jon Epcar (drums). The band's vision led the manager
David Sonenberg to work with them. When acting on
Broadway, Carney was invited to be part of the album ''Broadway's Carols for a Cure
in 2011 ("St. Nicholas Sky" featuring T.V. Carpio) and 2013 ("A Savior is Born"). Carney also recorded the single "Rise Above 1" with Bono and The Edge in 2011, an adapted song from the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Apart from making his own music, Carney also wrote songs for soundtracks for films such as The Tempest (2010) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2
(2012). In October 2016 Carney released his debut solo album, Youth Is Wasted'', which he wrote and produced himself. Since then Carney was on tour two times (Reeve Carney Fall Tour 2016 and Youth Is Wasted Tour 2017). Three songs from his album as well as the album itself were nominated in six categories on the 16th Annual Independent Music Awards (The IMAs). "Think of You" won Best Song – Acoustic, "Resurrection" won Best Song – Rock or Hard Rock and the album won Best Album –
Adult Contemporary.
Acting Carney made his first appearance on the big screen in the film
The Saint of Fort Washington (1993) with a small role. In 1999, Carney got the role of the young Ishmael Chambers in the film
Snow Falling on Cedars. His performance received favorable reviews and subsequently earned him the Best Performance in a Feature Film at the
21st Young Artist Awards in 2000. Carney was part of the cast of a few films as a child actor before he decided to focus totally on music. In 2010, he was hand-picked by the director
Julie Taymor to play Ferdinand in a film adaptation of
William Shakespeare's play
The Tempest.
Taymor also suggested Carney for the lead role of
Peter Parker/Spider-Man in
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway. During the auditions, Bono and The Edge, the show's musical composers, were surprised by Carney's vocals and he ended up being chosen for the role. He starred for 3 years as Spider-Man which began previews in November 2010. The rest of his bandmates performed as part of the
pit orchestra for
Turn Off the Dark. He played his final performance on Sunday, September 15, 2013. Meanwhile, in 2012, Carney played
Taylor Swift's love interest in her "
I Knew You Were Trouble" music video. Swift was a fan of Carney's band and came up with the idea. In 2014, Carney was cast as
Dorian Gray in the
Showtime series
Penny Dreadful. The show had three seasons (2014–2016). During the filming of the last season of
Penny Dreadful, Carney was on
Kenny Ortega's radar to play Riff Raff, the handyman, on
Fox's remake of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He got the role on the two-hour musical television film ''
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again'' and recorded three of the songs on the film's
soundtrack. The film premiered on the Fox network on October 20, 2016. In 2017, Carney joined the cast of the
Citadel Theatre production of
Hadestown as
Orpheus. The production reunited Carney with his
Spider-Man co-stars
Patrick Page and T.V. Carpio. Carney continued with the musical for its run at the
Royal National Theatre in 2018 and reprised the role in the Broadway production, which began previews on March 22 and opened on April 17, 2019. He departed the role on November 19, 2023, after 6 years. He reprised the role for his
West End debut from February to March 2025 for a limited engagement opposite his original Broadway cast co-stars
Eva Noblezada, Page,
Amber Gray and
André de Shields. In 2021, it was announced that Carney had signed on to star as
Jeff Buckley in a film about the latter's life, career and death. The film is tentatively titled as
Everybody Here Wants You. The film has support from Buckley's family; his mother Mary Guibert, the film's co-producer, said "this will be the only official dramatisation of Jeff's story". Carney began starring alongside his wife Eva Noblezada (who plays
Daisy Buchanan) in
The Great Gatsby on Broadway on March 30th, 2026, as the titular character
Jay Gatsby. ==Personal life==