Jonah Hill (born Jonah Hill Feldstein; December 20, 1983) is an American actor and filmmaker. Hill ranked 28th on Forbes's list of highest-paid actors from June 2014 to June 2015, at $16 million. Among his accolades are nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Hill has had a number of comedic roles in films including The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), Get Him to the Greek (2010), 21 Jump Street (2012), This Is the End (2013), and 22 Jump Street (2014). For his performances in Moneyball (2011) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also had roles in Cyrus (2010), War Dogs (2016), Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021).
Hill has voiced characters in the animated films Horton Hears a Who! (2008), the How to Train Your Dragon franchise (2010–2019), Megamind (2010), The Lego Movie franchise (2014–2019), and Sausage Party (2016). As a screenwriter, he contributed to the stories of 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, Sausage Party, Why Him? (2016), and You People (2023). He starred in the Netflix miniseries Maniac (2018) and made his directorial debut with the film Mid90s (2018), for which he also wrote the screenplay. He directed and produced the documentary Stutz (2022).
Jonah Hill Feldstein was born on December 20, 1983, in Los Angeles, California. His parents are Sharon Lyn (née Chalkin), a costume designer and fashion stylist, and Richard Feldstein, a tour accountant for Guns N' Roses. He has a younger sister, actress Beanie Feldstein (b. 1993). Their older brother, Jordan Feldstein (1977–2017), was a music manager for Robin Thicke and Maroon 5 until his sudden death at age 40 from a pulmonary embolism. Their parents were originally from Long Island, New York, and the family vacationed in the Catskill Mountains.
Hill and his siblings were raised in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Cheviot Hills, where he continues to reside, and attended the Center for Early Education, Brentwood School, and then Crossroads School in Santa Monica. He worked at Hot Rod Skateboard Shop on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles. After graduating from high school in 2002, he attended The New School, Bard College and the University of Colorado Boulder, but did not earn a degree.
Hill is Jewish and had a bar mitzvah ceremony.
In college, Hill began writing his own plays and performing them in the Black and White bar in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. His plays developed a small following and helped him realize that his true desire was to act in films. He was befriended by Dustin Hoffman's children, Rebecca and Jake, who introduced him to their father. The elder Hoffman asked him to audition for a role in I Heart Huckabees, in which Hill made his film debut.
Hill then made a brief appearance in Judd Apatow's directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which led to his appearing in the role of a virgin video game tester in the comedy Grandma's Boy (2006), and roles in the comedies Accepted and Click, playing Adam Sandler's character's son in the latter. He had a larger supporting role in the Apatow-directed Knocked Up (2007). On television he played the dorm RA, Guy, on the first season of the Oxygen Network sitcom Campus Ladies, and guest-starred in an episode of Clark and Michael.
His first leading role was in the Apatow-produced comedy Superbad, where he appeared with Michael Cera, in roles based on the teen years of the film's writers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It is often cited as the film that launched both Hill and Cera's careers. He followed it with an uncredited role as Dewey Cox's brother Nate in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story in December 2007. He hosted Saturday Night Live on March 15, 2008, featuring musical guest Mariah Carey.
Hill wanted to be a writer since he was young and dreamed of joining the writing teams of The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and The Larry Sanders Show. At one point, Hill was writing a screenplay with close friend and I Heart Huckabees co-star Jason Schwartzman. He wrote Pure Imagination, a comedy for Sony about a man who develops an imaginary friend after a traumatic experience. Filming was expected to begin in 2008 but it has been stuck in "development hell" since then.
He next starred in Judd Apatow's third directorial feature, Funny People (2009) which also starred Adam Sandler, Eric Bana and Seth Rogen. He played Cooker in Fred Wolf's Strange Wilderness. He was an associate producer of the 2009 Sacha Baron Cohen mockumentary Brüno. He guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Pranks and Greens", portraying an immature man named Andy Hamilton who was hailed the best prankster in Springfield Elementary School history. He had an uncredited role in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a security guard.
After co-starring in Get Him to the Greek with Russell Brand, Hill started seeking more work in independent film. He turned down a role as one of the three principals in The Hangover to work with directors Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass in Cyrus (2010).
In July 2011, he appeared at ESPN's ESPY Awards sporting a much slimmer physique, stating he had lost 40 pounds (18 kg). In November 2011, along with Sam Worthington and Dwight Howard, he starred in commercials for the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, making his first appearance with his new look. Also in 2011, he created the Fox animated series Allen Gregory with Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul. It received very negative reviews and was canceled by Fox on January 8, 2012.
In 2011, Hill starred in Bennett Miller's feature film Moneyball with Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It garnered favorable reviews. Critics noted Hill's performance as a departure from his usual comedy roles. He received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture; and in late January 2012, received his first Oscar nomination, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the role.
In 2012, Hill co-starred with Channing Tatum in the film 21 Jump Street. It received an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. He co-wrote the treatment for the 2012 film 21 Jump Street with screenwriter Michael Bacall. Later that year, Hill starred in the film The Watch with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. Hill was a co-producer on the movie Brüno and did some writing for Sacha Baron Cohen, who "taught him how to become a better writer".
In 2011, it was announced that Hill was in talks to appear in Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained. Citing a possible conflict with his commitment to The Watch, Hill lamented that to act in a Tarantino movie was "the perfect next step" in his career. He was able to join the Django Unchained cast in a minor role, and it was released in 2012. He was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2012.
In 2013, Hill appeared in This Is the End as himself, and in the biographical film The Wolf of Wall Street, and received his second Academy Award nomination for his work on the latter. In an interview with Howard Stern on January 21, 2014, Hill said he had accepted SAG's minimum wage of US$60,000 for The Wolf of Wall Street.
He voiced the Green Lantern in the adventure comedy The Lego Movie in February 2014, which blends computer animation and live action. He reprised his role as Morton Schmidt in 22 Jump Street (2014), the sequel to 21 Jump Street. His next performance was as Michael Finkel in the mystery thriller True Story (2015), with James Franco. In 2016, he played a surety agent for a production company in the Coen brothers' period comedy Hail, Caesar! and starred alongside Miles Teller in the biographical crime war comedy-drama War Dogs (2016) playing arms dealer Efraim Diveroli. In The Guardian, Wendy Ide wrote of his performance: "Jonah Hill is so repellent — all swagger, sweat and unapologetic sexism — in War Dogs, that for a while, you don't immediately realise what a blitzkrieg of a performance he delivers." That month, Hill also co-starred as a sausage named Carl in the adult animated comedy film Sausage Party, with Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Paul Rudd, Edward Norton and Salma Hayek.