John C. Reilly

John Christopher Reilly was born on May 24, 1965, in Chicago, Illinois, the fifth of six children. His father, who ran an industrial linen supply company, was of Irish and Scottish descent, and his mother was of Lithuanian ancestry. Reilly grew up in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood, was raised Catholic, and attended Brother Rice High School before enrolling at DePaul University in Chicago.

Reilly began his screen career in 1989 with Brian De Palma's war film Casualties of War, in which he played PFC Herbert Hatcher. De Palma expanded the role after being impressed by Reilly's performance. The following year he appeared in Tony Scott's Days of Thunder as a NASCAR crew member, and in the crime film State of Grace as an Irish hoodlum named Stevie McGuire. His early film work also included Hoffa (1992), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and The River Wild (1994), in which he played one of two criminals who terrorize a family on a rafting trip alongside Kevin Bacon.

His stage career ran concurrently with his film work. Between 1990 and 2005, Reilly appeared on Broadway in The Grapes of Wrath, the drama A Streetcar Named Desire, and Sam Shepard's True West. His performance in the 2000 Broadway revival of True West earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play.

Reilly's film profile rose considerably through his collaborations with director Paul Thomas Anderson. He played a near-homeless man taken under the wing of a seasoned gambler in Hard Eight (1996), a pornographic actor in Boogie Nights (1997), and a deeply religious police officer in Magnolia (1999). Terrence Malick's ensemble war film The Thin Red Line (1998) also featured Reilly, though much of his footage was cut during editing. In 2000, he appeared in The Perfect Storm as a veteran crew member aboard the Andrea Gail fishing vessel.

The year 2002 marked a significant peak in Reilly's dramatic career, when he appeared in three films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In Chicago, he played Amos Hart, the trusting husband of Renée Zellweger's character, a performance that earned him nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. That same year, Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York cast him as corrupt 19th-century constable Happy Jack Mulraney, and Stephen Daldry's The Hours featured him as the husband of Julianne Moore's character. He also appeared in The Aviator (2004) as Noah Dietrich, Howard Hughes's trusted business partner.

Reilly subsequently built a parallel career in comedy. He co-starred with Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) as Cal Naughton Jr., then took the title role in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) and played Dale Doback in Step Brothers (2008). During this period he also began co-starring as Dr. Steve Brule in the television series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which ran from 2007 to 2010 and spawned the spin-off Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule, which continued through 2016. He provided the voice of the title character in the Wreck-It Ralph films released in 2012 and 2018.

Reilly continued to work in independent film throughout this period, appearing in Cyrus, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and Carnage, all in 2011, followed by The Lobster (2015) and The Sisters Brothers (2018). His portrayal of comedian Oliver Hardy in the 2018 biopic Stan and Ollie drew nominations for both the Golden Globe Award and the Critics' Choice Award. On television, he created and starred in the Showtime comedy series Moonbase 8 in 2020 and led the ensemble cast of the HBO sports drama Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, which ran from 2022 to 2023. Reilly also performs music with his band John Reilly and Friends.