Jack Black

Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He has played leading roles in family and comedy films, in addition to his voice work in animated features. His accolades include an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and nominations for two Critics' Choice Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. In 2018, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Black began acting at age 13, and his early films include Dead Man Walking (1995), The Cable Guy (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996) and Enemy of the State (1998). He gained recognition for starring in the romantic comedy High Fidelity (2000), which led to substantial roles in films like Shallow Hal (2001) and Orange County (2002).

He established himself as a leading man with a starring role in the musical comedy School of Rock (2003), earning a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actor. He then starred in the films King Kong (2005), The Holiday (2006), Nacho Libre (2006) and Tropic Thunder (2008). Also in 2008, he began voicing Po in the Kung Fu Panda franchise.

Black was critically praised for portraying Bernie Tiede in the biographical thriller film Bernie (2011), receiving several Best Actor award nominations. Following career fluctuations, he experienced a resurgence with roles in Goosebumps (2016), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018), Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) and A Minecraft Movie (2025).

He also voiced Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and its sequel, receiving a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for the former.

Outside of acting, Black formed the comedy musical duo Tenacious D with long-time friend Kyle Gass in 1994; they have won one Grammy for Best Metal Performance. Since 2018, he has run a YouTube channel called Jablinski Games.

Early life

Thomas Jacob Black was born in Santa Monica, California, on August 28, 1969, the son of satellite engineers Thomas William Black and Judith Love Cohen. He was raised in Hermosa Beach, California. His mother worked on the Minuteman nuclear missile guidance system, the Apollo lunar module guidance system, and the science ground station for the Hubble Space Telescope, and was also a writer.

He has three older half-siblings through his mother: scientist Neil Siegel, Howard Siegel, and Rachel Siegel. His mother was born Jewish, to a family from Poland and Russia. His father converted to Judaism, and is of German, English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Black was raised Jewish, attending Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah.

Despite being named Thomas, a name his family has used since his ancestors lived in Ireland, his parents called him Jack as a nickname instead.

Black's parents divorced when he was 10, and his father then stopped practicing Judaism. Black moved to Culver City with his father and frequently visited his mother's home. For high school, Black's parents enrolled him at the Poseidon School, a private secondary school designed for students struggling in the traditional school system.

He also attended the Crossroads School, where he excelled in drama. He later attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), but dropped out during his second year to pursue a career in entertainment. Fellow UCLA student Tim Robbins later cast Black in Bob Roberts. In 1995 and 1996, he gained recurring roles in the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show.

Acting career

Early roles

In 1982, Black's first acting job was in a television commercial for the video game Pitfall! at age 13. In 1987, Black joined the Actors' Gang, a theater troupe founded by UCLA students including Tim Robbins, and appeared in a variety of stage productions. Black's adult career began with small roles on prime time television, including Life Goes On, Northern Exposure, Mr.

Show, Picket Fences, The Golden Palace, and The X-Files. Black appeared in the unaired TV pilot Heat Vision and Jack, directed by Ben Stiller, in which he played an ex-astronaut pursued by actor Ron Silver. He was accompanied by his friend who had merged with a motorcycle, voiced by Owen Wilson.

After Tim Robbins cast him in Bob Roberts (1992), Black began appearing in small film roles such as Airborne (1993), Demolition Man (1993), Waterworld (1995), Dead Man Walking (1995), The Cable Guy (1996), The Fan (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Crossworlds (1996), The Jackal (1997), Enemy of the State (1998), and others. He had a small role in True Romance (1993) as a security guard, but the scene was deleted.

2000s

In 2000, Black co-starred in the film High Fidelity as a wild employee in a record store run by John Cusack. Black considers his role in High Fidelity as his breakout into the Hollywood scene. He quickly gained leading roles in films such as Saving Silverman (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), Orange County (2002), and Gulliver's Travels (2010).

He received particular praise for his starring role in the well-received School of Rock (2003), earning critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy. Black took part in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? celebrity edition, along with Denis Leary, Jimmy Kimmel, and others, and was handed the prize of US$125,000 in October 2001.

He has also had starring voice-overs in animated features, including Zeke in Ice Age (2002) and Lenny in Shark Tale (2004). In 2004, Black guest-starred in the first episode of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim show Tom Goes to the Mayor.

He starred in one of his few dramatic roles as the obsessed filmmaker Carl Denham in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong, a performance he based on Orson Welles. In 2006, he played the role of King Herod in a one night benefit concert of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre.

That same year, he starred as the romantic love interest to Kate Winslet in the Nancy Meyers romantic comedy The Holiday (2006). Also in 2006, he starred in the comedy film Nacho Libre, which he also produced, and Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, which he also wrote and produced. In 2007, he took a supporting role in the Noah Baumbach directed comedy-drama film Margot at the Wedding starring Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

That same year, he made a cameo appearance, portraying Paul McCartney, in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). Black has voice acted on other occasions, including "Husbands and Knives" from The Simpsons, which aired November 18, 2007, portraying Milo, the friendly owner of the rival comic book store. In 2008, he starred in the buddy comedy Be Kind Rewind, opposite Mos Def, and the war satire Tropic Thunder, alongside Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr.

On December 14, he hosted the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards. Black has hosted the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Acceptable.TV.

He voiced the title role in Kung Fu Panda, which grossed US$20.3 million on its opening day, June 6, 2008, as well as Kung Fu Panda 2 Kung Fu Panda 3 and Kung Fu Panda 4; this is his favorite role, calling it “the role of a lifetime” and he praises the tutoring of co-star and two-time Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman. In addition to Kung Fu Panda (2008), He provided the voice of the main character, roadie Eddie Riggs, in the heavy metal–themed action-adventure video game Brütal Legend, for which he won the Best Voice award at the Spike Video Game Awards in 2009.

In 2009, he appeared in the post-Super Bowl episode of The Office along with Cloris Leachman and Jessica Alba in a fake movie within the show. He starred in the Harold Ramis-directed adventure comedy Year One (2009) alongside Michael Cera. In April 2009, Black starred in an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba!, in which he vocalized children songs, such as "It's Not Fun to Get Lost", "Friends", and "The Goodbye Song". Black voiced Darth Vader in Bad Lip Reading's parodies of the Star Wars original trilogy on YouTube.

2010s

In 2010, Black made a guest appearance on Community and also guest-starred on Nickelodeon's iCarly in an episode titled, "iStart a Fan War". Black has appeared numerous times on the "untelevised TV network" short film festival Channel 101, created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, starring in the shows Computerman, Timebelt, and Laserfart.

He also provided an introduction for the unaired sketch comedy Awesometown, donning a Colonial-era military uniform. In the introduction, he claims to be George Washington and takes credit for the accomplishments of other American presidents such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.^{[citation needed]} His next film, The Big Year, a competitive birdwatching comedy co-starring Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and JoBeth Williams, was released in October 2011.

Black garnered a second Golden Globe Award nomination, this time in the category Best Actor in a Comedy, for his 2011 starring role in Richard Linklater's black comedy Bernie. He played as real-life murderer Bernie Tiede, a funeral director in a small East Texas town, who befriends and eventually murders a rich widow, played by Shirley MacLaine.

Black's subdued portrayal, authentic East Texas accent, and musical talent – he sings several gospel hymns as well as "Seventy-six Trombones" – had Roger Ebert describing Black's work as "one of the performances of the year." He presented the tribute to Led Zeppelin when the band was named as 2012 recipients of Kennedy Center Honors.

In 2015, Black played a fictional version of real-life author R. L. Stine for Goosebumps, and provided the voices of two of Stine's creations, Slappy the Dummy and The Invisible Boy. He reprised the Stine role in the film's 2018 sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. He also voiced himself and many other additional characters on the animated YouTube series "Tenacious D in Post-Apocalypto", which he also co-directed and co-wrote, along with his Tenacious D partner Kyle Gass.

In 2017, he portrayed a teenage girl inhabiting the body of Professor Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon in the action/adventure comedy film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. He starred alongside Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan. The film received positive reviews and was a commercial success.

The following year, he took a supporting dramatic turn in the Gus Van Sant drama Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018). The film received critical acclaim and starred Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and Jonah Hill. Also in 2018, Black appeared in the music video for Gorillaz song "Humility". He reprised his role in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle's sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level (2019), which, like its predecessor, was also a box-office success, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2019.

That year, he starred in the children's fantasy film The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2019) alongside Cate Blanchett and Renée Elise Goldsberry.

2020s

In 2022, he lent his voice to the Richard Linklater animated coming-of-age film Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood. Also that year, he portrayed disc jockey Wolfman Jack in the Roku biographical parody film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. From 2022 to 2023, he reprised the role of Po in the Netflix animated series Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight. He also guest starred on the Paramount+ series Big Nate and the Adult Swim series Rick and Morty.

In 2023, Black voiced Bowser in Illumination's animated feature film The Super Mario Bros. Movie, based on the Nintendo games. The film was released in April 2023, and reprises the role of the character again in the sequel The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, based on the video games Super Mario Galaxy (2007) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010), released in April 2026 and they became an international box office success ranking as between one of the highest-grossing films of 2023 and one of the highest-grossing films of 2026.

That same year, he also took roles as Joseph Stalin in the Mel Brooks Hulu comedy series History of the World, Part II and Captain Bombardier in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. Black then reprised his role as Po in Kung Fu Panda 4, voiced Claptrap in Borderlands (both 2024), and portrayed Steve in A Minecraft Movie (2025), and will reprise his role as Steve in the sequel, A Minecraft Movie Squared (2027).

Music career

Tenacious D

Black is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the comedy rock/hard rock duo Tenacious D along with Kyle Gass. They have released five albums, a self-titled debut, The Pick of Destiny, Rize of the Fenix, and Post-Apocalypto. One of their songs from their album The Pick of Destiny, titled "The Metal", was used in the music video games Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Brütal Legend. "Rock Your Socks", from the album Tenacious D, was played in the music video game Rock Band Unplugged as well. "Master Exploder" from The Pick Of Destiny went on to be used in music video games Guitar Hero Van Halen, Rock Band 2, and Brütal Legend, along with their song "Tribute" from Tenacious D. "Master Exploder" and "The Metal" featured in the comedy film Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

The film, directed by Tenacious D veteran Liam Lynch, featured recurring characters from Black's comedy such as Lee the super-fan and the Sasquatch. Several celebrities had roles in the film; actor Tim Robbins cameos as does Dave Grohl as Satan. Ben Stiller also makes an appearance as a worker at a Guitar Center, even having a role in the music video for "Tribute".

In October 2010, Tenacious D appeared at BlizzCon 2010, a convention hosted by the game designers, Blizzard Entertainment. In 2012, Jack Black joined up with other celebrities to record "Book People Unite", a song sponsored by the Library of Congress and RIF.

On July 14, 2024, Tenacious D celebrated Gass' birthday during their performance at the ICC Sydney Theater. A birthday cake was brought out and Black encouraged Gass to make a wish. Gass responded, "Don't miss Trump next time", referring to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump the day before. Two days later, Black wrote on social media that he was "blindsided" by Gass' comment and that he did not condone hate speech or political violence "in any form".

Tenacious D canceled the rest of their world tour, and Black said their "creative plans are on hold". Gass apologized on social media, calling his comment "highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake". Gass deleted the apology later that week.