Murphy grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, in an Irish Catholic family. He attended Catholic school from first through eighth grade, and graduated from Warren Central High School . He has described his mother as a "beauty queen who left it all to stay at home and take care of her two sons." She has written 5 books and worked in communications for over 20 years before retiring. His father worked in the newspaper industry as a circulation director before he retired after 30 years. After coming out as gay, he saw his first therapist, who found nothing wrong with him other than being "'too precocious for his own good.'" Murphy performed with a choir as a kid, which would later inform his work on Glee.

Murphy attended Indiana University, Bloomington. While at college, he was a staff member of the school newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, and he was a member of the school's "Singing Hoosiers" show choir.

He started out as a journalist working for The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News Knoxville News Sentinel and Entertainment Weekly. He began scriptwriting in the late 1990s, when Steven Spielberg purchased his script, Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn?.

Television

Murphy is the Golden Globe-winning creator of Nip/Tuck, which aired on FX and is both a commercial and critical hit. He is executive producer and has written and directed many episodes; in 2004, Murphy earned his first ever Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. Murphy took the show's signature line, "Tell me what you don't like about yourself" from a plastic surgeon he met when he was a journalist researching an undercover story on plastic surgery in Beverly Hills.

He started his career in television in 1999 with the teen comedy series Popular. The show aired on The WB for two seasons.

Murphy has also created a couple of failed pilots: the WB sitcom pilot St. Sass starring Delta Burke and Heather Matarazzo, which wasn't picked up. In 2008, Murphy wrote and directed the FX pilot, Pretty/Handsome, which also was not picked up.

Murphy's current project is a musical comedy television series for Fox,Glee. Fox aired a preview episode on May 18, 2009, following the season finale of American Idol; it premiered its first regular season episode on September 9, 2009. The show's early success led the network to add 9 episodes to its original order of 13, making it the first new fall series in 2009 to get a full-season order of 22 episodes, it was announced during the last half of Season 1, that FOX has ordered a complete full season of Season 2 and a Season 3 of Glee due to high ratings and positive feedback about the show and the characters.He won his first Emmy for directing the Pilot episode for Glee, while the show received a record of 19 nomination including Outstanding Comedy Series, but lost to Modern Family.

Films

In 2006, Murphy wrote the screenplay for and directed the feature film Running with Scissors. Based on the memoir by Augusten Burroughs, the movie version starred Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox, and, as the young Burroughs, newcomer Joseph Cross. A lawsuit was filed by Burroughs's mother and other relatives regarding the film, alleging defamation. The outcome of the case is unknown.

Murphy has several films in development - Dirty Tricks, a political comedy; Eat Pray Love, a drama; Face, a plastic surgery thriller; Need, an erotic thriller, and Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.

Murphy is openly gay. Murphy says he sometimes goes to church in Los Angeles. Murphy serves on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation.