Jimmi Simpson

Jimmi Simpson is an American actor born on November 21, 1975, in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where he attended Hackettstown High School and took his first acting class. He earned a BA in theater from Bloomsburg University before spending four seasons performing at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His work across stage, film, and television has earned him nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award.

Simpson entered film at age 25, playing Noah in the Amy Heckerling–directed teen romantic comedy Loser (2000). A supporting role in the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red followed in 2002, along with guest appearances on television series including 24, NYPD Blue, Cold Case, and Carnivàle. He began playing the recurring character Liam McPoyle on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2005, a role he continued through 2023. Film work during this period included the sports comedy Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), the revisionist Western Seraphim Falls (2006), and David Fincher's thriller Zodiac (2007), in which he portrayed Mike Mageau, a surviving victim of the real-life Zodiac Killer.

On Broadway, Simpson appeared in Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention during the 2007–2008 season, portraying inventor Philo Farnsworth. The role earned him a Theatre World Award in 2008. He also made several appearances as a fictitious intern named Lyle on The Late Show with David Letterman between 2008 and November 2009. Additional television credits from this period include guest roles on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, My Name is Earl, House M.D., and Psych, the latter of which featured him in a recurring capacity from 2009 to 2013. His film appearances continued with The Invention of Lying (2009), Date Night (2010), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), White House Down (2013), and The Truth About Emanuel (2013). From 2011 to 2012, he played Dr. Lloyd Lowery on the A&E crime drama Breakout Kings. He subsequently joined the cast of the Netflix political thriller House of Cards, portraying Gavin Orsay between 2014 and 2015, and was nominated twice alongside his co-stars for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble.

In 2015, Simpson headlined a Circle X Theatre production of Trevor, a play by Nick Jones in which he portrayed the title character, a full-grown chimpanzee. The following year, he starred as Soldier, a psychotic drug dealer, in the first season of SundanceTV's dark comedy-drama Hap and Leonard. Also in 2016, he appeared in a principal role on the debut season of HBO's science fiction drama Westworld, playing William, a businessman who visits a Wild West–themed amusement park and falls in love with one of its android inhabitants. His performance on the show's second season earned him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, and he was nominated alongside his co-stars for a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2017.

In 2017, Simpson appeared as Walton, a lieutenant aboard the USS Callister, in the opening episode of the fourth season of the British anthology series Black Mirror. That portrayal earned him a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. The following year, he starred as real-life LAPD detective Russell Poole in Unsolved, a ten-part USA Network miniseries examining the 1990s murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, which aired between February and May 2018. He also appeared in David Robert Mitchell's neo-noir black comedy Under the Silver Lake (2018). In 2019, he headlined the ten-part Epix series Perpetual Grace, LTD, playing James Schaeler, an ex-firefighter caught up in a conspiracy to scam a corrupt pastor.

Subsequent film credits include the action thriller Unhinged (2020) and the comedic crime drama Breaking News in Yuba County (2021). Between April and July 2022, Simpson portrayed CIA agent Spencer Clay in Showtime's single-season adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Beginning in March 2022, he played Tom Andrews in the Apple TV+ drama Pachinko, a multigenerational story following an immigrant Korean family across four generations. He returned to Black Mirror in 2025 and appeared in the science fiction series Dark Matter in 2024. Simpson has two older brothers and holds a BA in theater from Bloomsburg University.