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Josef Ellers was born in 1988 in Klagenfurt at the Wörthersee, Austria. While still at secondary school, he made his stage debut in 2005 at the Volksoper Wien, Vienna's second opera house and a leading venue for operetta and musicals, playing Friedrich von Trapp in the musical "The Sound of Music". Immediately after finishing school in 2007, he passed the paritätische Bühnenreifeprüfung in musical theater, Austria's official qualifying examination for stage performers. That autumn, he appeared in the operetta "Im weißen Rößl" at the Wiener Kammerspiele. He went on to complete a bachelor's degree in acting at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien (Vienna Conservatory), graduating in 2013.
Alongside his studies, he took on various roles between 2010 and 2013 at Vienna's Rabenhof-Theater and the Theater der Jugend. From the 2013/14 season until 2016, he was a permanent member of the ensemble at the Theater in der Josefstadt, one of Vienna's oldest and most renowned theaters. His roles there included parts in the world premiere of "Die Schüsse von Sarajevo" and Gustave in "The Lady of the Camellias." At the theater's second venue, the Kammerspiele, he also played the son who is about to be married in the hit musical "La Cage aux Folles".
Guest engagements followed at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich (2016–2018) and the Stadttheater Klagenfurt (2017–2019). From 2017, he also appeared in several productions at Bronski & Grünberg, an independent theater in Vienna. In 2019, he appeared at the Theatersommer Haag, a summer theater festival in Lower Austria, as Lucio in Shakespeare's comedy "Measure for Measure."
From 2011, Ellers also took on occasional guest roles in television series alongside his stage work, including the Austrian crime series "SOKO Donau" and "Schnell ermittelt". From 2019 to 2024, he had a regular role as a police sergeant in the historical crime series "Vienna Blood".
Theater nonetheless remained the focus of his career. He appeared at venues including Dresden's Semperoper and the Theater am Gärtnerplatz, and during the Johann Strauss Year 2025, Vienna's celebration of the composer's 200th birthday. Since 2023, he has played the title role in "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" at Hamburg's Theater am Großmarkt, in an engagement running until 2026. Ellers also regularly performs "#Werther", a one-man adaptation of Goethe's epistolary novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther," in schools and at other venues across the German-speaking world.
Josef Ellers played his first feature film role in Doris Dörrie's "Frau Winkler verlässt das Haus" ("Programmed to Stay," 2026), as a humanlike care robot looking after a lonely elderly woman (Angela Winkler).