Paul Dano

Paul Franklin Dano is an American actor and film director born on June 19, 1984, in New York City. He grew up in Connecticut, where his family settled in Wilton after earlier stints in New York City and New Canaan. Dano attended Wilton High School, graduating in 2002, and later studied at Eugene Lang College in New York City. His parents were a homemaker and a financial advisor, and he has a younger sister named Sarah. His early involvement in community theater in New Canaan led his parents to bring him to New York to pursue performance professionally.

Dano's stage career began in childhood. In 1996, at the Ford Center of the Performing Arts in Toronto, he portrayed The Little Boy, Edgar, in the world premiere of Terrence McNally's musical Ragtime. His Broadway debut came at age twelve in John Tillinger's revival of Inherit the Wind, in which he appeared alongside George C. Scott and Charles Durning. He subsequently appeared in additional Broadway productions, including A Thousand Clowns at the Roundabout Theatre and A Month in the Country. In 2010 and 2011, he appeared in A Free Man of Color on Broadway, and in 2019 he starred in True West. His stage work also extended to Off-Broadway, including Ethan Hawke's directorial debut Things We Want during its 2007 run.

Dano made his film debut at sixteen in L.I.E. (2001), playing Howie Blitzer, a teenager who becomes involved with a middle-aged ephebophile played by Brian Cox. Broader recognition came in 2006 with Little Miss Sunshine, in which he played Dwayne Hoover, a voluntarily mute teenager within an ensemble cast that received collective awards recognition. The following year, he took on a dual role in Paul Thomas Anderson's period drama There Will Be Blood (2007), earning a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Paul and Eli Sunday. He reunited with Brian Cox in the 2009 Icelandic film The Good Heart and provided voice work for the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are that same year.

Throughout the early 2010s, Dano appeared in a range of high-profile productions. He had supporting roles in the action film Knight and Day (2010), the science fiction film Cowboys and Aliens (2011), and the time-travel thriller Looper (2012). In 2012 he also appeared in Ruby Sparks alongside his partner Zoe Kazan, and in Being Flynn as writer Nick Flynn opposite Robert De Niro. In 2013, he portrayed John Tibeats in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and played Alex Jones in Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners. In 2014, he portrayed a younger version of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson in the biopic Love and Mercy, a performance that earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 2015, he appeared alongside Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in the Italian comedy-drama Youth, playing an actor named Jimmy Tree. In early 2016, he appeared as Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC's six-part television adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

In 2016, Dano starred in the absurdist black comedy Swiss Army Man, playing Hank Thompson alongside Daniel Radcliffe. That same year, he announced his directorial debut with Wildlife, based on Richard Ford's 1990 novel of the same name, which he co-wrote with Zoe Kazan. The film starred Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, and also screened at Cannes, Toronto, and the Mill Valley Film Festival, earning widespread critical acclaim. Also in 2018, Dano starred as a convicted murderer in the Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. In 2022, he played the Riddler in The Batman and portrayed a fictionalized version of Arnold Spielberg in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, the latter earning him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. He also authored the comic book The Riddler: Year One in 2022. Across his career, Dano has received nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards.