Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill has built a career around restless comic energy, sharp character work and a growing interest in what happens behind the camera. Born in Los Angeles on December 20, 1983, he began writing and performing plays while attending college in New York. His film debut came in I Heart Huckabees, followed by appearances in comedies including The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Accepted and Knocked Up. Superbad gave Hill his first leading role and established the qualities that would define much of his early screen work: fast-talking confidence, insecurity and frustration colliding in the same character. He later carried that comic rhythm into Get Him to the Greek and found a strong partnership with Channing Tatum in 21 Jump Street and its sequel, 22 Jump Street. Hill also helped write the treatment for the first film, reflecting an interest in writing that predates his acting career. His performance opposite Brad Pitt in Moneyball marked a significant shift. Playing a restrained, analytical figure far removed from his louder comedy roles, Hill received his first Academy Award nomination for supporting actor. A second nomination followed for The Wolf of Wall Street, where his talent for turning excess, neediness and menace into dark comedy found an especially potent outlet. Hill has continued moving between comedy, drama and voice work, with credits including True Story, War Dogs, The Lego Movie, Maniac and Don’t Look Up. That range does not feel like a rejection of his comic beginnings so much as an expansion of them; even his more abrasive characters often depend on his precise sense of timing. Writing and directing have become an increasingly visible part of Hill’s work. He made his feature directing debut with Mid90s, from his own screenplay, and later directed and appeared in the documentary Stutz. Across acting, writing, producing and directing, his career has developed less as a straight line than as a series of deliberate turns, each widening the kind of stories he can help tell.