Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was born in Los Angeles on February 17, 1981, and began acting as a child. He appeared in the baseball film *Angels in the Outfield* in 1994, then became widely known for playing Tommy Solomon on the NBC sitcom *3rd Rock from the Sun*. The series ran from 1996 to 2001 and cast him as an extraterrestrial trying to navigate adolescence in a human family. During that run, he also played Cameron James, the student pursuing Bianca Stratford, in the 1999 film *10 Things I Hate About You*.

After *3rd Rock from the Sun*, Gordon-Levitt took roles that contrasted with his sitcom work. In Gregg Araki’s *Mysterious Skin*, he portrayed Neil McCormick, a young man confronting the effects of childhood sexual abuse. In Rian Johnson’s 2005 debut feature *Brick*, he played Brendan Frye, a high school student investigating his former girlfriend’s disappearance. The film transplanted the language and plotting of a detective noir into a suburban school. Gordon-Levitt later reunited with Johnson for the 2012 science-fiction thriller *Looper*, playing a younger version of a hitman whose older self is portrayed by Bruce Willis.

His role as Tom Hansen in *(500) Days of Summer* brought him a Golden Globe nomination. The 2009 film follows Tom’s relationship with Summer Finn, played by Zooey Deschanel, through a deliberately nonlinear account of their time together. He received another Golden Globe nomination for *50/50*, in which he played Adam Lerner, a young man diagnosed with cancer. Around the same period, he appeared as Arthur, the organizer of a dream-infiltration team, in Christopher Nolan’s *Inception*. Nolan cast him again as police officer John Blake in *The Dark Knight Rises*.

Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed and starred in the 2013 film *Don Jon*, playing a New Jersey bartender whose expectations about intimacy are shaped by pornography. Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore also starred. His other historical and biographical roles include Robert Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s *Lincoln*, high-wire artist Philippe Petit in *The Walk*, and Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone’s *Snowden*. Beyond film, Gordon-Levitt founded HitRecord, an online platform for collaborative creative projects. He created and starred in the Apple TV+ series *Mr. Corman*, which premiered in 2021 and centers on a Los Angeles public-school teacher. In 2022, he portrayed Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick in the first season of *Super Pumped*. These projects span television comedy, independent drama, major studio films and work he developed himself.