Jeremy Strong
Birthdate: Dec 25, 1978
Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Jeremy Strong (birthname: Jeremy Strong) is known as a fearsomely dedicated actor in the mold of Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman, and has achieved considerable fame for his pivotal role as Kendall Roy on HBO’s Succession, one of most acclaimed television series in history.
Despite the show providing Strong with his widest visibility, as well as a phase (2004-2012) of concentrated, serious theater work with such companies as Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Playwrights Horizons, his career has largely revolved around feature film roles.
That started with the lead role in the independent Darren Grodsky/Danny Jacobs film, Humboldt County (2008), with Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif, and Chris Messina. Jeremy Strong quickly nabbed a supporting role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008), with Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, and Betty Buckley, followed by a supporting role in writer-director Oren Moverman’s Military drama, The Messenger (2009), with Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, and Jena Malone.
Strong joined the exceptional German filmmaker Michael Glawogger for two back-to-back features: the postwar Austrian family saga, Kill Daddy Good Night (2009), with Ulrich Tukur, and Contact High (2009), an episodic comedy with Michael Ostrowski, Detlev Buck, and Georg Friedrich. Strong returned to indie U.S. cinema with the Sundance-premiering The Romantics (2010), with filmmaker Galt Niederhoffer adapting her own novel, with Katie Holmes, Josh Duhamel, and Anna Paquin, and then earned a role as Lincoln’s private secretary in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), starring Strong’s personal hero, Daniel Day-Lewis (who won the Best Actor Oscar, one of the film’s twelve nominations), Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, and Tommy Lee Jones, and grossing $275 million worldwide.
Jeremy Strong continued to be cast in quality American indie films, such as Robot & Frank (2012), winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Peter Sarsgaard, James Marsden, and Liv Tyler, as well as the South by Southwest-premiering film from writer-director, Nate Meyer, See Girl Run (2012), with Robin Tunney, Adam Scott, and William Sadler.
One of Strong’s first studio films (and another nominated for the Best Picture Oscar) was Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden manhunt drama for Columbia Pictures, Zero Dark Thirty (2012), with Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, and Joel Edgerton, and nominated for five Oscars while grossing three times its budget cost (between $40 and $52 million).
Another slice of recent American history for Jeremy Strong was one of his first eye-catching film roles as Lee Harvey Oswald in writer-director Peter Landesman’s JFK assassination drama, Parkland (2013), with James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver, and Paul Giamatti.
During this period, Strong began to be cast in more prominent roles in major films, such as writer-producer-director David Dobkin’s courtroom drama, The Judge (2014), with Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr., Vera Farmiga, Thornton, and Vincent D’Onofrio; a second film with writer-director Oren Moverman, Time Out of Mind (2014), with Richard Gere, Ben Vereen, Jena Malone, Kyra Sedgwick, and Steve Buscemi; director Ava DuVernay’s Civil Right drama, Selma (2014), starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Giovanni Ribisi, Tim Roth, and Oprah Winfrey (and yet another film with Strong nominated for the Best Picture Oscar); and Adam McKay’s comedy, The Big Short (2015), in which Strong played opposite Steve Carell and Marisa Tomei, with Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt.
Strong reunited with director Bigelow for her charged drama (with writer Mark Boal), Detroit (2017), starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, John Krasinski, and Anthony Mackie, well received by most critics if not audiences, which was not the case with Strong’s next, the Jessica Chastain-starring Molly’s Game (2017)—a critical and box-office success for writer-director Aaron Sorkin and co-starring Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Chris O’Dowd, and Bill Camp.
Although Jeremy Strong’s next film (with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, and Djimon Hounsou), writer-director Steven Knight’s mystery thriller, Serenity (2019), failed with critics and at the box office, his next—also starring McConaughey—Guy Ritchie’s action comedy, The Gentlemen (2019), did not, earning $115 million globally.
Strong scored a bull’s eye and strong acclaim as Jerry Rubin in his second film with Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, and Mark Rylance, earning over three times cost ($35 million) and receiving six Oscar nominations including Best Picture.
Jeremy Strong played a vital role in filmmaker James Gray’s autobiographical family drama, Armageddon Time (2022), with Anne Hathaway, Banks Repeta, and Anthony Hopkins, followed by Strong taking on the sinister historical character of Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice (2024), co-starring Sebastian Stan, Martin Donovan and Maria Bakalova under Ali Abbasi’s direction, and which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and released in the U.S.—after a legal battle waged by Trump and his lawyers—by Briarcliff Entertainment.
Personal Details
Jeremy Strong was born in Boston and raised first in the working-class Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, and then in Sudbury, Massachusetts, by parents David and Maureen Strong. After receiving a scholarship to attend Yale with an emphasis in drama, Strong changed his major to English but acted with the independent Yale-based theater troupe, the Yale Dramatic Association.
An acolyte and an avid follower of actors Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman, Strong received an internship with Hoffman’s production company and arranged for a gathering of Yale students with Pacino. After Yale, Strong continued his drama studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theater, long a hotbed of powerful acting talent. During his phase as a struggling actor, Strong worked as an assistant to Day-Lewis and a typist for playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
After years of working in productions at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Strong landed his first Broadway role in A Man for All Seasons, and then his first film role after acclaimed work on Off-Broadway and being a Leonore Annenberg Fellow at Lincoln Center Theatre. Strong has been married to Danish-born psychiatrist Emma Wall since 2016; the couple has three children, and live in both New York and Copenhagen. His height is 5’ 10½”.
Filmography
actor
Previous (11)
- 2024 | The ApprenticeasRoy Cohn
The Apprentice
The story of how a young Donald Trump started his real-estate business in 1970s and '80s New York with the helping hand of infamous lawyer Roy M. Cohn.
- 2022 | Armageddon TimeasIrving Graff
Armageddon Time
A deeply personal coming-of-age story about the strength of family and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.
- 2020 | The GentlemenasMatthew
The Gentlemen
An American expat tries to sell off his highly profitable marijuana empire in London, triggering plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.
- 2019 |
- 2018 |
- 2018 | Molly’s Game
Molly’s Game
The true story of Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game and became an FBI target.
- 2017 |
- 2015 | The Big Short
The Big Short
In 2006-2007 a group of investors bet against the US mortgage market. In their research they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is.
- 2014 |
- 2012 | Zero Dark ThirtyasThomas
Zero Dark Thirty
A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.
- 2012 |
Some Facts About Jeremy Strong
Strong View on Acting: Jeremy Strong explains his approach to acting by quoting pianist/musician Keith Jarrett: “I connect every music-making experience I have, including every day here in the studio, with a great power, and if I do not surrender to it, nothing happens.”
Oscar Bait: Strong has had a knack for acting in movies that do well at the Academy Awards: in an eight-year period, from 2012 to 2020, Strong acted in no less than five Best Picture nominees, all of them based on historic events including Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Selma, The Big Short, and The Trial of the Chicago 7.
