Jeremy Strong

Jeremy Strong is an American actor born on December 25, 1978, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Maureen and David Strong. His mother, of Irish descent, worked as a hospice nurse, while his father, whose family was Jewish and originally from Russia, worked in juvenile jails. Strong grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, which he described as a rough area he was eager to leave. When he was ten, his family relocated to the suburb of Sudbury, where he became involved with a children's theater group and first developed an interest in acting. Among his fellow participants in that group was the older sister of actor Chris Evans; Strong and Evans later appeared together in a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Strong idolized Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman from an early age, following their careers closely and reading their interviews. While still a teenager, he worked on the greenery crew of the 1996 film adaptation of The Crucible, which was shot near Boston, and later worked on the sound crew of Amistad, holding a boom microphone over Anthony Hopkins during a speech. He also contributed to the editing of Pacino's directorial debut, Looking for Richard. DreamWorks, which produced Amistad, provided Strong with a letter of recommendation for college applications. He was accepted at Yale University on a scholarship, where he initially intended to study drama before switching his major to English. He continued acting throughout his time at Yale, performing in productions through the student-run Yale Dramatic Association, including plays that Pacino had performed, such as American Buffalo and The Indian Wants the Bronx. During one summer at Yale, Strong received an internship with Hoffman's production company. He also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

After graduating from Yale, Strong moved to New York in 2001, living in a small SoHo apartment above a restaurant where he waited tables. For nearly a year he received no audition calls, and attempts to secure representation, including an introduction arranged by Chris Evans to an agent at Creative Artists Agency, were unsuccessful. The following summer he joined the company at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in western Massachusetts, where he returned in 2004 to appear alongside Jessica Chastain, Chris Messina, and Michelle Williams in The Cherry Orchard. During the mid-2000s he worked as a typist for playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who, after observing his research methods for an offstage role, considered writing a play based on Strong before her death in 2006. To prepare for his off-Broadway debut as a distraught soldier in John Patrick Shanley's Defiance in 2006, Strong underwent marine weapons training at Camp Lejeune. In 2003, he had also served as Daniel Day-Lewis's personal assistant on the set of The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a role he performed with such dedication that crew members nicknamed him Cletus.

Strong made his Broadway debut in 2008 in the revival of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, playing Richard Rich. He returned to Broadway in 2024 in a revival of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, portraying a conscientious doctor in a small town, a performance that earned him the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. His Broadway career thus spans 2008 to 2024.

Beyond the stage, Strong built a substantial screen career. He appeared in supporting roles in Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, both released in 2012, followed by Parkland in 2013 and The Big Short in 2015. His breakthrough came with the HBO drama series Succession, in which he portrayed Kendall Roy from 2018 to 2023, winning both the Primetime Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series for that role. He subsequently appeared in The Gentlemen in 2019, The Trial of the Chicago 7 in 2020, and Armageddon Time in 2022. His portrayal of Roy Cohn in the 2024 biographical drama The Apprentice brought him nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2025 he portrayed music producer Jon Landau in the musical biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

Strong's accolades include a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award, along with Academy Award and BAFTA nominations. In 2022, Time magazine included him on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.