Justin Hartley will always be recognized for his starring role on the long-running NBC drama series, This Is Us, but the actor (who is sometimes confused with Glen Powell) had a rather prolific small-screen career long before he played Kevin Pearson for six seasons. With Hartley’s latest offering, CBS’ Tracker, being one of the biggest series on the 2024 TV calendar so far, we thought it would be fun to go back and look at other shows that featured the actor over the years.
From major parts on shows like Smallville to one-off appearances on crime dramas like CSI: NY and Cold Case, Hartley’s done a little bit of everything throughout his career. Let’s take a look at 10 of those shows right now, including two different soap operas.
Passions (2002 - 2006)
Like countless other major stars, Justin Hartley got his start on a soap opera, specifically NBC’s Passions. Similar to other soaps, Passions was heavy on romance, double-crossing, and drama, and Hartley’s Nicholas Foxworth Crane experienced it all throughout the actor’s four years on the show. It’s hard to find clips where the actor isn’t either hooking up with someone, shirtless, or involved in some far-fetched and over-the-top scheme.
But in case you’ve never watched an episode of Passions (which you should change right now), you should know that the soap opera features all kinds of paranormal shenanigans and other dramatic twists. It’s wild, to say the least.
CSI: NY (2007)
Justin Hartley made an appearance during a CSI: NY Season 3 episode in which a music mogul is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, but he was only around for one scene. Hartley, who played an across-the-hall neighbor to the victim, was shirtless when speaking with the detectives trying to get information about the case in a scene that is barely a couple of minutes long. But this wouldn’t be the last time the actor appeared on a CBS crime procedural in 2007.
Cold Case (2007)
The Cold Case Season 5 episode titled “Justice” saw Justin Hartley take on the role of college valedictorian Mike Delaney, a character who was murdered just hours after his graduation. The case is brought up years later after someone vandalized his grave, which leads to Det. Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) and her team uncovering the fact that Mike was allegedly a serial rapist who was on the receiving end of revenge and street justice after his many victims couldn’t find help through the proper channels.
Smallville (2006 - 2011)
Though the Aquaman TV show, which would have seen Justin Hartley play Arthur Curry, never came to fruition after a failed pilot, the actor would appear in a major capacity on another DC Comics series. From 2006 to 2011, Hartley portrayed Oliver Queen, aka, Green Arrow, on the longrunning Superman prequel series on The WB/The CW. The introduction of Oliver Queen in the show’s sixth season was well-received by fans of the series, and Hartley himself had a blast playing the iconic DC superhero.
Hartley ended up remaining on the series through its conclusion and was part of some of the major storylines throughout his time hanging out with Tom Welling's Clark Kent and the rest of the large ensemble cast of DC characters. It’s just a bummer that a planned spinoff never happened because Hartley made it sound awesome.
Chuck (2011)
Justin Hartley had several one-off performances throughout the 2000s and 2010s, including a wild turn as Wesley Sneijder on the NBC action-comedy series Chuck. In this 2011 episode titled “Chuck Versus the Bearded Bandit”, Wesley fakes his own kidnapping so that he can work with the federal government to put his brother away. But no one let Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) or the rest of his team know of the situation, which makes the situation even more of a mess.
Hart Of Dixie (2012)
Remember Hart of Dixie, the medical drama series following heart surgeon Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson) as she moves to Alabama to take over a doctor’s office? Well, the show, which ran on The CW for four seasons before being cancelled in 2015, featured another one of Justin Hartley’s great one-off roles. In the 2012 episode titled “Bachelorettes & Bullets,” Hartley played Jesse Kinsella, the brother of Zoe’s future husband, Wade (Wilson Bethel).
Emily Owens, M.D. (2012 - 2013)
Justin Hartley continued his run on The CW in 2012 when he joined the Emily Owens, M.D. cast as Will Collins, a first-year surgical intern and former friend of Mami Gummer’s titular character. Throughout the show’s first and only season, Will fails time and time again to realize that Emily has a crush on him, which causes some major tension between the two doctors and pretty much everyone else at Denver Memorial Hospital.
Revenge (2013 - 2014)
Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ iconic novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Revenge spent four seasons following Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) as she set out to get back at the families from the Hamptons beach community that harmed her years earlier. A lot of characters came and went during the show’s 89-episode run, including Justin Hartley’s Patrick Osbourne, the long-lost son of antagonist Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe), who showed up during the show’s third season.
Mistresses (2014 - 2016)
In 2014, Justin Hartley joined the cast of Mistresses, an ABC drama series about four female friends navigating life, love, and their respective professions in Los Angeles. Hartley entered the picture as Scott Trosman, a successful plastic surgeon who meets and falls for Josslyn "Joss" Carver (Jes Macallan), resulting in an intense and long-running relationship where the pair learn a great deal about themselves and each other (especially the doctor’s obsession with shoes). Hartley would stick around until the show was cancelled by ABC in 2016.
The Young And The Restless (2014 - 2016)
Justin Hartley got his start in soap operas and so it wasn’t all that surprising in 2014 when the in-demand actor took his talents to The Young and the Restless. During his time on the show, Hartley played Adam Newman, the son of series mainstays Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) and Hope Wilson (Signy Coleman), and was given a tremendous amount of screentime and major arcs. Hartley left the long-running soap in September 2016 when he joined the cast of This Is Us, per TheWrap.
These are just a few of Justin Hartley’s TV appearances and we didn’t even get into all his movie roles from over the years. But hey, maybe we’ll revisit Hartley’s film efforts if Tracker is a success on CBS and with Paramount+ subscribers.
