Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill (born Jonah Hill Feldstein; December 20, 1983) is an American actor. He is known for his comedic roles in films including Superbad (2007), Knocked Up (2007), Get Him to the Greek (2010), 21 Jump Street (2012), This Is the End (2013), and 22 Jump Street (2014). For his performances in Moneyball (2011) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Hill ranked 28th on Forbes list of highest-paid actors from June 2014 to June 2015, at $16million. In 2020, he was found to have sworn on film more than any other actor. As a screenwriter, he contributed to the stories of 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, Sausage Party, Why Him?, and You People. He is also known for his roles in Cyrus (2010), War Dogs (2016), Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021). In 2018, he starred in the Netflix miniseries Maniac and made his directorial debut with the film Mid90s, for which he also wrote the screenplay. He directed and produced the documentary Stutz (2022).
Hill has provided voices for the animated films Horton Hears a Who! (2008), Megamind (2010), the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy (2010–2019), The Lego Movie (2014), Sausage Party (2016), and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019).
Early life and education
Hill was born on December 20, 1983, in Los Angeles. His parents are Sharon Lyn, a costume designer and fashion stylist, and Richard Feldstein, a tour accountant for Guns N' Roses. He has a younger sister, actress Beanie Feldstein (b. 1993). Their older brother, Jordan Feldstein (1977–2017), was a music manager for Robin Thicke and Maroon 5 until his sudden death at age 40 from a DVT/pulmonary embolism. Their parents were originally from Long Island, New York, and the family vacationed in the Catskill Mountains.
Hill and his siblings were raised in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Cheviot Hills, where he continues to reside, and attended the Center for Early Education, Brentwood School, and then Crossroads School in Santa Monica. He worked at Hot Rod Skateboard Shop on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles. After graduating from high school in 2002, he attended The New School, Bard College and the University of Colorado Boulder, but did not earn a degree.
Hill is Jewish and had a bar mitzvah ceremony.
Career
2000s: Comedy roles
In college, Hill began writing his own plays and performing them in the Black and White bar in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. His plays developed a small following and helped him realize that his true desire was to act in films. He was befriended by Dustin Hoffman's children, Rebecca and Jake, who introduced him to their father. The elder Hoffman asked him to audition for a role in I Heart Huckabees, in which Hill made his film debut.
Hill then made a brief appearance in Judd Apatow's directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which led to his appearing in the role of a virgin video game tester in the comedy Grandma's Boy (2006), and roles in the comedies Accepted and Click, playing Adam Sandler's character's son in the latter. He had a larger supporting role in the Apatow-directed Knocked Up (2007). On television he played the "RA Guy" on the first season of the Oxygen Network sitcom Campus Ladies, and guest-starred in an episode of Clark and Michael.
His first leading role was in the Apatow-produced comedy Superbad, where he appeared with Michael Cera, in roles based on the teen years of the film's writers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It is often cited as the film that launched Hill's and Cera's careers. He followed it with an uncredited role as Dewey Cox's brother Nate in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story in December 2007. He hosted Saturday Night Live on March 15, 2008, featuring musical guest Mariah Carey.
He next starred in Judd Apatow's third directorial feature, Funny People (2009) which also starred Adam Sandler, Eric Bana and Seth Rogen. He played Cooker in Fred Wolf's Strange Wilderness. He was an associate producer of the 2009 Sacha Baron Cohen mockumentary Brüno. He guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Pranks and Greens", portraying an immature man named Andy Hamilton who was hailed the best prankster in Springfield Elementary School history. He had an uncredited role in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a security guard.
2010s
After co-starring in Get Him to the Greek with Russell Brand, Hill started seeking more work in independent film. He turned down a role as one of the three principals in The Hangover to work with directors Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass in Cyrus (2010).
In July 2011, he appeared at ESPN's ESPY Awards sporting a much slimmer physique, stating he had lost . In November 2011, along with Sam Worthington and Dwight Howard, he starred in commercials for the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, making his first appearance with his new look. Also in 2011, he created the Fox animated series Allen Gregory with Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul. It received very negative reviews and was canceled by Fox on January 8, 2012.
In 2011, Hill starred in Bennett Miller's feature film Moneyball with Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It garnered favorable reviews. Critics noted Hill's performance as a departure from his usual comedy roles. He received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture; and in late January 2012, received his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the role.
In 2012, Hill co-starred with Channing Tatum in the film 21 Jump Street. It received an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Later that year, Hill starred in the film The Watch with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn.
In 2011, it was announced that Hill was in talks to appear in Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained. Citing a possible conflict with his commitment to The Watch, Hill lamented that to act in a Tarantino movie was "the perfect next step" in his career. He was able to join the Django Unchained cast in a minor role, and it was released in 2012. He was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2012.
In 2013, Hill appeared in This Is the End as himself, and in the biographical film The Wolf of Wall Street, and received his second Academy Award nomination for his work on the latter. In an interview with Howard Stern on January 21, 2014, Hill said he had accepted SAG's minimum wage of 60,000 for Wolf of Wall Street.
He voiced the Green Lantern in the adventure comedy The Lego Movie in February 2014, which blends computer animation and live action. He reprised his role as Morton Schmidt in 22 Jump Street (2014), the sequel to 21 Jump Street. His next performance was as Michael Finkel in the mystery thriller True Story (2015), with James Franco. In 2016, he played a surety agent for a production company in the Coen brothers' period comedy Hail, Caesar! and starred alongside Miles Teller in the biographical crime war comedy-drama War Dogs (2016) playing arms dealer Efraim Diveroli. In The Guardian, Wendy Ide wrote of his performance: "Jonah Hill is so repellent — all swagger, sweat and unapologetic sexism — in War Dogs, that for a while, you don't immediately realise what a blitzkrieg of a performance he delivers." That month, Hill also co-starred as a sausage named Carl in adult computer-animated comedy film Sausage Party, with Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, and James Franco.
Hill starred with Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, and Jack Black in Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot directed by Gus Van Sant. He directed the music video for Danny Brown's song "Ain't It Funny" in 2017, featuring Van Sant. Hill made his directorial debut from a screenplay he wrote with the film Mid90s (2018) starring Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, and Katherine Waterston. which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2018, and was positively received. It was theatrically released in the United States on October 19, 2018. Also in 2018, Hill starred as Owen Milgrim in the Netflix dark comedy miniseries Maniac alongside Emma Stone. In the October 2018 issue of Vanity Fair, he was named to the magazine's best dressed list. In 2019, Hill played Lewis, a heavily Southern-accented book agent, in the comedy The Beach Bum.
On September 23, 2019, it was reported that Hill was in final negotiations to play the villain in Matt Reeves's The Batman. However, an agreement was not reached and Hill eventually departed the project.
2020s
In 2020, Hill appeared alongside director Martin Scorsese in a commercial for Coca-Cola Energy, titled Show Up which aired during Super Bowl LIV.
Hill was cast in Adam McKay's political comedy satire Don't Look Up alongside Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet and Mark Rylance. Streep said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that she would be playing the President of the United States, with Hill playing the role of her son and Chief of Staff. The film is set around a global catastrophe and is described by Streep as a Dr. Strangelove type of satirical film and a "metaphor for global warming". The film was filmed in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic and was released on Netflix in December 2021.
In November 2021, Hill was cast as Jerry Garcia in the biopic feature of the Grateful Dead directed by Martin Scorsese. He will also produce the project under his Strong Baby banner along with Matt Dines.
In 2023, he starred in You People, together with Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Lauren London.
Writing, producing and directing
Hill wanted to be a writer since he was young and dreamed of joining the writing teams of The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and The Larry Sanders Show. At one point, Hill was writing a screenplay with close friend and I Heart Huckabees co-star Jason Schwartzman. He wrote Pure Imagination, a comedy for Sony about a man who develops an imaginary friend after a traumatic experience. Filming was expected to begin in 2008 but it has been stuck in development hell since then. Hill was a co-producer on the movie Brüno and did some writing for Sacha Baron Cohen, who "taught him how to become a better writer". Hill co-wrote the treatment for the 2012 film 21 Jump Street with screenwriter Michael Bacall.
Hill directed the music videos for the Sara Bareilles song "Gonna Get Over You" from her 2010 album Kaleidoscope Heart, the Danny Brown song "Ain't it Funny" from his 2016 album Atrocity Exhibition, Travis Scott's song "Wake Up" from his 2018 album Astroworld, and the Vampire Weekend song "Sunflower" from their 2019 album Father of the Bride.
Hill wrote and directed (but did not appear in) the 2018 coming-of-age film Mid90s. Hill directed (and appears in) Stutz, a 2022 Netflix documentary.
Personal life
In July 2011, Hill appeared at the 2011 ESPN ESPY Awards having lost a significant amount of weight; he later said he had done so to seek more serious roles. He explained that he consulted with a trainer and a nutritionist, and had changed his diet to mainly sushi. In October 2021, Hill asked fans to stop making comments about his physical appearance, stating: "I know you mean well but I kindly ask that you not comment on my body, good or bad I want to politely let you know it's not helpful and doesn't feel good. Much respect."
Hill is known to train in Brazilian jiu jitsu and described it as "humbling". In October 2019, he and Gianna Santos were engaged; they ended the engagement in October 2020. Hill says: "TM [transcendental meditation] along with surfing, I'd say that those two things have changed my happiness level and my ability to cope with stress, anxiety and depression… [they've] really helped."
In 2016, Architectural Digest reported that Hill bought a four-bedroom loft in the Noho neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.
In November 2022, Hill filed a petition to legally drop "Feldstein" from his name. His petition was granted the following January.
In June 2023, People reported that Hill welcomed his first child with girlfriend Olivia Millar.
Allegations
In July 2023, Hill was accused of being emotionally abusive and a "misogynist narcissist" by ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady. Brady, a surfing instructor and law student, publicly shared several text exchanges between the pair in which Hill said he could not continue the relationship if she continued surfing with other men, posting pictures of herself in a swimsuit, and spending time with friends he did not approve of.
During the same month, former child actress Alexa Nikolas accused Hill of shoving her against a door and kissing her without her consent during a party at Justin Long's house when she was 16 years old and he was 24. Nikolas recounted to Business Insider that Hill and Long were plying her with alcohol the entire night and stated that what Hill did to her "was a crime".
A litigation attorney working for Hill called Nikolas' accusations "a complete fabrication", stating that the event "never happened" and that Nikolas is "demonstrably unreliable" and a "serial accuser". A representative for Justin Long also reacted to the allegations, writing: "This is the first time Justin has been made aware of this situation that allegedly happened nearly two decades ago. While Justin is sympathetic to any and all victims of any abuse, the simple fact remains he has no knowledge of what may or may not have happened concerning Ms. Nikolas".
References
External links
1983 births
Living people
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American male actors
American film producers
American male comedians
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Bard College alumni
Comedians from California
Crossroads School alumni
Film producers from California
Film producers from New York (state)
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American male actors
Jewish American male comedians
Jewish male comedians
Male actors from California
Male actors from Los Angeles
The New School alumni
University of Colorado Boulder alumni