Jeremy Piven

About Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is a two-time Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning American actor.

Jeremy Piven was born in New York, New York, and grew up in Evanston, Illinois, in north suburban Chicago. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, as a teenager. He played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story, there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents Byrne Piven and Joyce (née Hiller), both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He has a sister, Shira, and attended Camp Chi, a Jewish Community Center summer camp in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, in the 1970s. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. While at Drake he became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute in Waterford, CT. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop (as are Cusack's sisters Joan and Ann). Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school.

Piven's first significant role was as a regular castmember for several seasons on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, where he played the headwriter Jerry. Piven has appeared in several successful films, including The Family Man, Black Hawk Down, Heat, PCU, Old School and Runaway Jury. He also had a brief appearance as a gay salesman in Rush Hour 2.