Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill is an American actor, writer, director, and producer born in Los Angeles, California, on December 20, 1983. He grew up in a Jewish family; his mother, Sharon Lyn, was a costume designer, and his father, Richard Feldstein, worked as an accountant. His sister is actor Beanie Feldstein. Hill attended The New School in New York, where he studied drama and began writing plays. He also performed sketches and sought acting work through friends in the comedy scene.

His screen debut came in David O. Russell’s 2004 film I Heart Huckabees, in which he played Bret. Early appearances included The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Accepted, Knocked Up, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. His breakthrough arrived with Superbad (2007), the high-school comedy written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Hill played Seth, one of two friends trying to obtain alcohol before graduation; Michael Cera played Evan, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse played Fogell.

Hill moved between broad comedy and dramatic work. In Moneyball (2011), directed by Bennett Miller and adapted from Michael Lewis’s book, he portrayed Peter Brand, the Yale-educated analyst who helps Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane challenge baseball’s conventional scouting system. The performance earned Hill an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He received a second supporting-actor Oscar nomination for playing Donnie Azoff in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort.

With Channing Tatum, Hill headlined 21 Jump Street (2012) as Morton Schmidt, a police officer sent undercover to high school. The film revived the premise of the 1987–1991 television series and led to 22 Jump Street in 2014. In War Dogs (2016), Hill portrayed arms dealer Efraim Diveroli opposite Miles Teller as David Packouz; the film drew on a real Pentagon contracting scandal. His voice roles include Snotlout Jorgenson in the How to Train Your Dragon films and Green Lantern in The Lego Movie.

Hill made his feature directorial debut with Mid90s (2018), a coming-of-age film set in 1990s Los Angeles and centered on a thirteen-year-old skateboarder named Stevie. He wrote the screenplay and cast Sunny Suljic in the lead role. In 2022, Hill released Stutz, a documentary he directed about his therapist, Phil Stutz, and Stutz’s visual therapeutic tools. The film also records conversations about anxiety, grief, and the limits of conventional self-improvement. Hill has also produced projects, including Mid90s, while continuing to select roles in films and television.