Jordan Haworth Peele (born February 21, 1979) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker known for his film and television work in the comedy and horror genres. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. Peele started his career in comedy before transitioning to writing and directing psychological horror with comedic elements.
In the early 2000s Peele began his career in improv comedy and performed with Boom Chicago and The Second City. His breakout role came in 2003 when he was hired as a cast member on the Fox sketch comedy series Mad TV, where he spent five seasons, leaving the show in 2008. In the following years Peele and his frequent Mad TV collaborator, Keegan-Michael Key, created and starred in their own Comedy Central sketch comedy series Key & Peele (2012–2015). The series was critically acclaimed, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. The two wrote, produced, and starred in the comedy film Keanu (2016) and have appeared in various projects since.
His 2017 directorial debut, the horror film Get Out, was a critical and box office success for which he received numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, along with nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. He received another Academy Award nomination for Best Picture for producing Spike Lee's comedy-drama BlacKkKlansman (2018). He directed, wrote, and produced the films Us (2019) and Nope (2022). Critics have since frequently named Us, Nope, and in particular Get Out as among the best films of the 21st century.
He founded the film and television production company Monkeypaw Productions in 2012. He co-wrote and produced Candyman (2021) and Wendell and Wild (2022), co-starring in the latter. Peele has also voice-acted in the animated films Storks (2016), Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), and Toy Story 4 (2019), as well as in the adult animated sitcom Big Mouth (2017–2025). He co-created the TBS comedy series The Last O.G. (2018–2022) and the YouTube Premium comedy series Weird City (2019). He also served as the host and producer of the Paramount+ revival of the anthology series The Twilight Zone (2019–2020).
Peele was born in New York City on February 21, 1979. His mother, Lucinda Williams, is white, from Maryland. His father, Hayward Peele, Jr. (died 1999), was African American, originally from North Carolina. Peele last saw his father when he was seven years old and was raised by his single mother on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Peele had been a cinephile ever since he was a young child and decided at 12 that he wanted to be a film director. Peele states that the moment he knew he had a gift of some sort occurred at a camp where he told a scary campfire story and noticed his own fear had disappeared. With a new sense of power, he realized that if he created the horror, there was no reason to be scared of it—something he took with him when he decided to direct film. In addition he states that Glory, Edward Scissorhands, Thelma & Louise, and Aliens were films that had a strong effect on him. He attended the Computer School in Manhattan, graduated from The Calhoun School on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1997 after securing a scholarship to attend the private school, and went on to Sarah Lawrence College, where he declared a major in puppetry. After two years Peele dropped out to form a comedy duo with Sarah Lawrence classmate and future Key & Peele writer Rebecca Drysdale.
Peele regularly performed at Boom Chicago, an English language improv troupe based in Amsterdam and The Second City in Chicago where he trained with Keegan-Michael Key.
In 2003, Peele joined the cast of Mad TV for its ninth season. Around the time Keegan-Michael Key joined the cast as a featured performer, it was assumed that Key would be chosen over Peele. The two of them ultimately were cast together after showing great comedic chemistry. Peele performed celebrity impersonations, which included favorites Ja Rule, Flavor Flav, Montel Williams, Morgan Freeman, Seal, Timbaland, will.i.am, and Forest Whitaker. Peele was absent from the first four episodes of his second season on Mad TV. He made a cameo in "Weird Al" Yankovic's video "White & Nerdy" with Mad TV co-star Keegan-Michael Key. After five seasons on Mad TV, Peele left the cast at the end of the 13th season.Peele was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award for his song "Sad Fitty Cent", a music video parody about 50 Cent lamenting over his rivalry with Kanye West. The lyrics were, according to the music video, written by Peele, and he was involved in arranging its music. In 2009, he appeared in Little Fockers. He appeared in a viral video titled "Hillary vs Obama" (which was shown as a Mad TV sketch) where he and a Hillary Clinton supporter (played by short-term cast member Lisa Donovan) argue over whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make a better president, only to get upstaged by a Rudy Giuliani supporter (played by Donovan's brother, Ben). Peele auditioned to be a cast member for Saturday Night Live when SNL producers were looking for someone to play Barack Obama (around the time when SNL and Mad TV — and other scripted shows — were put on hiatus due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike).
In 2010, Peele co-starred in the Fox comedy pilot The Station, and appeared with a recurring role in the Adult Swim series Childrens Hospital. He had a supporting role in the David Wain-directed comedy Wanderlust, which was released in 2012. Peele and his former Mad TV castmate and friend Keegan-Michael Key starred in their own Comedy Central sketch series Key & Peele, from 2012 to 2015. The series was a success with viewers, and spawned several skits and videos that went viral online.
In 2014, Peele played an FBI agent in the first season of the FX anthology series Fargo, inspired by the 1996 film of the same name.
In 2016, Peele starred in and produced, with Key, the first feature film in which the two both had leading roles, Keanu (they had previously both appeared in Wanderlust). The film received generally favorable reviews from critics.
In February 2017, Peele's first film, Get Out, was released to critical acclaim, eventually scoring a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film received universal acclaim for Peele's screenplay and direction, as well as the performance of its lead, Daniel Kaluuya, and was chosen by the National Board of Review, the American Film Institute, and Time magazine as one of the top 10 films of the year. The Atlantic called the film "a subversive horror masterpiece". Get Out proved to be popular with audiences, and it eventually became one of the most profitable horror films, and films of 2017, and grossed over $255 million on a budget of $4.5 million. For his work on the film, Peele received significant attention, as well as numerous accolades, including the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at the 2017 Gotham Independent Film Awards. The film also received four nominations at the 90th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nominations for Peele, as well as a Best Actor nomination for Kaluuya. Peele won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, becoming the first African American screenwriter to win in this category. He became the third person, after Warren Beatty and James L. Brooks, to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for a debut film, and the first black person to receive them for any one film. Get Out also earned him the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, as well as nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. Notably, Get Out was also nominated for Best Picture in Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes, something that sparked a bit of controversy surrounding the film and exactly what genre it fit into. The success prompted his Monkeypaw Productions company to a first look deal with Universal Pictures.