[5][9] During a 2012 interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Murphy claimed that he secretly dated "a lot of football players" in high school.

[5] Murphy attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he majored in journalism and was a member of the Singing Hoosiers vocal ensemble.

In 2006, Murphy wrote the screenplay for and directed the feature film Running with Scissors, based on the memoir by Augusten Burroughs.

[16] Murphy was one of four executive producers on the reality television series The Glee Project, which premiered on Oxygen on June 12, 2011.

[17] The show featured a group of contestants vying for the prize of a seven-episode arc on Glee, with someone being eliminated each week, until the winner is chosen in the final episode.

[21][22] Murphy and Glee co-executive producer Ali Adler created the half-hour comedy The New Normal, which premiered on NBC on September 10, 2012.

The series was based on Murphy's own experiences of having a child via surrogate, with the main characters, Bryan and David, named for Ryan and his husband.

In October 2014, FX greenlit a companion anthology series, American Crime Story, which Murphy and Falchuk executive produce.

The first season focused on the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on the set of their 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

With newcomer Steven Canals, Murphy and Falchuk launched a new series, Pose, set in the Ball community in mid-1980s New York City.

Murphy had wanted to adapt and knock off Paris Is Burning as a series[32] and Canals had been writing a script while at graduate school centered on a young African American teen made homeless for being gay, who moved to New York with dreams of going to dance school and who became adopted by a House mother.

[38] In May 2018, ahead of the Pose premiere, Murphy announced that he would donate all of his profits from the series to charitable organizations working with LGBT people, tweeting different non-profits including Sylvia Rivera Law Project,[39] Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund,[40] and Callen-Lorde Community Health Center[41] telling Variety that: "The thing that struck me in talking to so many of them, was how much they've struggled, how under attack they feel, how many of them find it difficult getting healthcare, and finding jobs.

In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named him among the fifty heroes "leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people".

Murphy co-created, with Ian Brennan, Monster, a true crime anthology series, for Netflix, which premiere in September 2022.

[49] Ryan Murphy has recently faced significant criticism for producing shows that have been described as insensitive, with concerns raised about his approach to safeguarding the well-being of those involved.

Relatives of the victims expressed distress, stating that they were not asked for permission and were deeply affected by the show's portrayal of their loved ones.

[52] In 2017, Murphy launched the Half Initiative, which aims to make Hollywood more inclusive by creating equal opportunities for women and minorities behind the camera.

Filmmaker Kristin Fairweather, the first recipient of a HALF award, described her experience in an interview with Screen Comment's Rudy Cecera.

[59] He was also courted by studios to direct film versions of the Broadway musicals The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wicked, and Annie.

[61] In 2019, Murphy was developing a 10-part miniseries adaptation of A Chorus Line and a biopic on the actress Marlene Dietrich starring Jessica Lange for Netflix.

[1] In 2020, Rob Lowe revealed via Instagram that he was in discussions with Murphy to play Joe Exotic in a scripted adaptation of Tiger King.

[64] In an interview about his show Pose, which is set in 1987, during the height of the initial AIDS crisis, Murphy described his concern about contracting HIV while at college, getting tested frequently even when celibate.

This includes Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Billy Porter, Darren Criss, Finn Wittrock, Cody Fern, Billie Lourd, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Stamos, and Andrew Rannells among many others.