Jackie Earle Haley

Jackie Earle Haley is an American actor born on July 14, 1961, in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He is the son of Haven Earle "Bud" Haley, a radio host, disc jockey, and actor, and Iris D. Douglas. Haley holds black belts in both Kenpo and Taekwondo and has lived in San Antonio, Texas, where he also owns a production company called JEH Productions.

Haley's performing career began in early childhood, when he was cast at age five as the voice of Dennis the Menace in a series of animated commercials. He later reprised that character in two episodes of the television series Curiosity Shop. His feature film debut came in the 1972 film The Outside Man, in which he played Eric, a lonely boy who attempts to impress a mob assassin holding him and his mother hostage. In 1974, he appeared as Norm in an episode of the Saturday morning children's program Shazam. Throughout the 1970s, Haley became a recognizable presence in film, appearing in John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust, Damnation Alley, and Losin' It, as well as in numerous television guest roles.

His most prominent work as a young actor came through the Bad News Bears franchise, in which he starred as Kelly Leak across three films: The Bad News Bears (1976), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977), and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978). He followed those roles with the part of Moocher in Peter Yates's critically praised 1979 film Breaking Away, and subsequently appeared in the short-lived television series of the same name. Haley also shot a pilot for an American adaptation of the British comedy The Young Ones, titled Oh, No! Not THEM!

In 1983, Haley made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys. His stage career during this period represented a transition from his established work in film and television toward broader performance contexts.

During most of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Haley's acting career went dormant. He relocated to San Antonio and shifted his professional focus to directing and producing television commercials. His return to acting came in 2006 with the recommendation of Sean Penn. He first appeared in Steven Zaillian's All the King's Men alongside Penn, playing Sugar Boy, Penn's character's bodyguard. That same year, he delivered a performance as a recently paroled sex offender in Todd Field's Little Children, a role he has said was shaped in part by the relationship between his mother and his brother True, who died of a heroin overdose. The performance earned Haley a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and in 2007 he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Haley continued to take on prominent roles in major productions. In 2008, he appeared in Semi-Pro and starred alongside Kate Beckinsale, Guy Pearce, and Dakota Fanning in Winged Creatures. In 2009, he played the masked vigilante Rorschach in Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen, reuniting with his Little Children co-star Patrick Wilson. Also in 2010, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island as a patient in a hospital for the criminally insane, and took on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Haley had previously auditioned for the role of Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven's original 1984 film, losing the part to Robert Englund. He signed on for a sequel to the remake, though it was not produced.

From 2010 to 2011, Haley was a series regular on the Fox series Human Target, playing Guerrero, an ally of the main character Christopher Chance. The series ran for two seasons before its cancellation in May 2011. In 2012, he played Willie Loomis in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows and portrayed Confederate States Vice President Alexander H. Stephens in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. He played Odin Quincannon in the first season of Preacher in 2016 and the supervillain The Terror across the first season of Amazon's reboot of The Tick, which ran from 2016 to 2018. In 2019, he appeared as Grewishka, a cyborg criminal, in Alita: Battle Angel.

Haley has been married three times. His first marriage, to Sherry Vaughan, took place in 1979. He has two children: a son, Christopher, born in 1986, and a daughter, Olivia, born in 1998, from his second marriage to Jennifer Haley. He married his third wife, Amelia Cruz, in 2004.