Jake Johnson

Info

Full Name: Jake Johnson
Date of birth: May 28, 1978 (48 years old)
Location: Illinois
Country: USA

Jake Johnson has been active for 22 years, participating in 22 movies that average a 6.5/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

Mark Jake Johnson Weinberger was born on 28 May 1978 in Evanston, just outside Chicago. His parents divorced when he was two, his mother raised him and his two older siblings on her own, and in high school he swapped his father's surname for hers, the Johnson that now sits on every poster. Decades later he is known around the world for two very different slackers: Nick Miller in 'New Girl' and a crumpled Spider-Man past his prime in the Spider-Verse films.

From playwriting to punchlines

Writing came first. He studied at the University of Iowa, where one of his plays earned him a place on the dramatic writing programme at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and he won the John Golden Playwriting Prize in 2002. Comedy and improv pulled him towards Los Angeles, where the small roles began to stack up: 'Redbelt', 'Get Him to the Greek', the best friend in 'No Strings Attached' with Natalie Portman, Jesus himself in 'A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas' and the principal in '21 Jump Street'.

Seven years in the loft

Then came 'New Girl'. From 2011 to 2018, across seven seasons on Fox opposite Zooey Deschanel, his grumpy bartender Nick Miller, forever failing to finish his novel, grew into one of the best loved sitcom characters of his generation, earning him a Critics' Choice nomination in 2013.

Between episodes he built a parallel career in American indie cinema. He was the sceptical journalist of the Sundance favourite 'Safety Not Guaranteed' with Aubrey Plaza, and his brewery romance with Olivia Wilde in 'Drinking Buddies' kicked off a long partnership with director Joe Swanberg that continued with 'Digging for Fire' and 'Win It All', a Netflix gambling comedy the pair wrote together.

The blockbusters called too. He was Lowery, the park's nostalgic control room technician, in 'Jurassic World' with Chris Pratt, joined Tom Cruise in 'The Mummy', played a fake cop alongside Damon Wayans Jr. in 'Let's Be Cops' and joined the lifelong game of 'Tag'. He was due back as Lowery in the third Jurassic World film, but the pandemic shrank his return to a photo glimpsed on a screen.

An unlikely Spider-Man

In 2018 he found his second signature role: Peter B. Parker, the tired, divorced Spider-Man gone to seed who reluctantly mentors Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore, in 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse', winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. He returned in 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' and will close the trilogy in 'Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse', due in 2027. He also voiced Grouchy in 'Smurfs: The Lost Village'.

On television he partnered Cobie Smulders in 'Stumptown', cancelled after one season when the pandemic upended its renewal, voiced a furious basketball coach in the animated 'Hoops' and published a seventies erotic magazine in 'Minx'. In 2023 he wrote, directed and starred in his first feature, 'Self Reliance', an absurdist comedy about a man offered a million dollars to survive a deadly reality game, with Anna Kendrick and Christopher Lloyd that premiered at SXSW before landing on streaming.

He keeps his private life firmly private. He's married to painter Erin Payne, whom he met in the mid 2000s at a Los Angeles bar where she was working, and they had twin daughters in 2014. Since 2023 he's also dished out dubious wisdom on 'We're Here to Help', the hit podcast he hosts with comedian Gareth Reynolds. Playwright, sitcom favourite, superhero, director... is there a lane he hasn't tried yet?