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Johannes Nussbaum was born on May 31, 1995 in Mödling, Lower Austria. He gained his first stage experience in the school theater at his elementary school. Encouraged to do so by the director of his theater club, he applied to an agency in Vienna specializing in children's casting. He first appeared in front of the camera in 2005 for a small supporting role in Ulrich Seidl's "Import Export", which was released in 2007. The following year he played the brother of a murdered student in an episode of the crime series "SOKO Donau".
Nussbaum played his first leading role in the feature film "Blutsbrüder teilen alles" ("Our Big time", DE/AT/RU 2012), about the friendship of two boys during World War II. This performance brought him to the attention of Peter Kern, who hired him for the lead role in "Diamantenfieber oder Kauf dir einen bunten Luftballon," about a 15-year-old who must care for his four brothers and grandmother alone. At the Diagonale in Graz, he was awarded Best Actor, with the jury highlighting his "remarkable lightness and authentic presence." He received a nomination for the New Faces Award for his supporting role in the 2013 TV film "Die Hebamme" ("The Midwife", DE/AT/CZ).
After graduating from high school in 2013, Nussbaum studied at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst 'Ernst Busch' (Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts) in Berlin from fall 2014 to 2018. During this time, he was seen in several feature film and television productions. For example, he played the leader of a group of tsunami orphans in "Fack ju Göhte 2" ("Suck Me Shakespeer", 2015), had a leading role as the only friend of a boarding school outsider in an episode of the series "Schuld nach Ferdinand von Schirach" (2015) and he was the childhood friend of the oldest Trapp daughter Agathe in "Die Trapp Familie - Ein Leben für die Musik" ("The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music", DE/AT 2015). His leading role in the first three seasons of the pre-watershed TV series "Vorstadtweiber" (2015-2018) brought him much attention: in it, he played the teenage son of the main character Maria, and is the secret lover of a politician's widow. At the 2016 Austrian Film and Television Award Romy, he received the award for Best Newcomer Actor for this role.
In addition to his work in front of the camera, Nussbaum also strongly focused on stage acting during his studies: he appeared at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in "Marat/Sade" (2016/17) and made a guest appearance at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden in 2018, where he was seen in a leading role in "Das große Heft" - for this role he received the Alfred Kerr Actor Award at the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2019. In his laudation, Franz Rogowski said, "His heart lies open without making a show of it. The slumbering figure of the world behind the character and stage decor, it was always present in this actor."
Nussbaum made further stage appearances in 2018 at the Salzburg Festival (in "Aeschylus - The Persians") and at Vienna's Bronski & Grünberg Theater (as Ferdinand in "Kabale und Liebe").
For television, he took on a permanent supporting role as the son of LKA officer Bergmann (Hary Prinz) in the Austrian TV series "Landkrimi" starting in 2018; in 2019, he was seen as a music student in the coming-of-age drama "Prélude" as well as in a smaller supporting role in Terrence Malick's "A Hidden Life."
Also in 2019, Johannes Nussbaum became an ensemble member at Munich's Residenztheater. He initially put film projects on the back burner, but kept apprearing in the "Landkrimis." At the end of 2021, the youth drama "Hannes" (already filmed in 2018) was released in cinemas: In it, Nussbaum embodied a teenager who falls into a coma after an accident, which drives his grieving best friend to an extraordinary show of friendship.