McGinley, one of five children, was born in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, the son of Patricia, a schoolteacher, and Gerald McGinley, a stockbroker. His paternal great-grandfather was from Donegal, Ireland. McGinley was raised in Millburn, New Jersey, and attended Millburn High School, where he played wide receiver for the school's football team. He studied acting at Syracuse University, Read more...

McGinley (also known as Johnny C. and sometimes credited as John McGinley), has had a prolific career, primarily as a supporting character actor. While working as John Turturro's understudy in John Patrick Shanley's 1984 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea he was noticed by a casting scout, which led to an audition for the role of Sergeant Red O'Neill in the Oscar-winning Platoon, although Read more...

In 2001, McGinley began work as a regular on the NBC sitcom Scrubs as the acerbic Dr. Perry Cox. Throughout the series Dr. Cox acts as an unwilling mentor to the protagonist J.D.. McGinley has said that there are three things over the course of the series that he improvises: his constant usage of girls' names for JD, which he does with all his real friends; the whistle, which he describes as "a Read more...