Jeremy Strong

Jeremy Strong (born December 25, 1978) is an American actor. Known for his intense method acting style in roles across both stage and screen, (An excerpt from the corresponding section of this article: Such techniques are often referred to as method acting, but Strong prefers the term "identity diffusion" because he does not draw on his own life experience.)

A graduate of Yale University, Strong studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. His film debut came that same year with the comedy Humboldt County, and he played small roles in the films Lincoln (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Parkland (2013), and The Big Short (2015). Strong's breakthrough was his portrayal of Kendall Roy in the HBO drama series Succession (20182023), winning the Primetime Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Strong acted in the films The Gentlemen (2019), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), and Armageddon Time (2022). For his portrayal of Roy Cohn in the biographical drama The Apprentice (2024) he earned Best Supporting Actor nominations for the Academy Award, Actor Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award. In 2025, he portrayed music producer Jon Landau in the musical biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

On stage, Strong made his off-Broadway debut in the John Patrick Shanley play Defiance in 2006, with his Broadway debut portrayed the role of Richard Rich in the revival of A Man for All Seasons in 2008. He returned to Broadway playing a conscientious doctor in a small town in the revival of the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People in 2024, earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Early life and education Strong was born on 25 December 1978 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Maureen and David Strong. His mother is of Irish descent, and his father's family is Jewish, originally from Russia; his paternal grandfather worked as a plumber in Queens, New York City. His mother worked as a hospice nurse, and his father worked in juvenile jails. His parents had a tumultuous relationship throughout his childhood and eventually divorced.

When Strong was 10, his parents moved the family to the suburb of Sudbury, for better schools. Strong recalled Sudbury as "a kind of country-club town where we didn't belong to the country club". His interest in acting began there, as he became involved with a children's theater group and performing in musicals. Among his costars in the children's theater group was Chris Evans' older sister; Evans remembers being impressed by Strong's performances. Later, Evans and Strong acted with each other in a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. On his first day in class, he found the professor's discussions of Konstantin Stanislavski and accompanying blackboard illustrations so alienating that he decided immediately to change his major to English.

By that time, Strong had begun getting off-Broadway roles. He took part in Marine weapons training at Camp Lejeune to prepare for his role as a marine in the John Patrick Shanley play Defiance (2005). David Rooney described Strong's character as a "a distraught, uneducated soldier from the small-town South". Rooney described his performance as "intense" noting, "while [the] dramaturgical shortcomings hamper the actors...Strong has emotional impact in his single scene." Strong immersed himself in early 17th-century Dutch philosophy to play a young Baruch Spinoza in David Ives's New Jerusalem in 2008. Also in 2008, Strong was asked to understudy with six hours' notice for an actor who had a family emergency; by the next night, he had memorized all the character's lines. He received favorable notice for this performance, and he was able to sign with an agent. He was chosen as the 2008/2009 Leonore Annenberg Fellow by Lincoln Center Theater and nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play twice within a three-year period. Strong's Defiance role helped him secure his first film role in Humboldt County. Strong was set to play a leading role in a major film for the first time in Bigelow's period crime drama Detroit (2017) as a soldier and practiced his marksmanship in preparation, but he was fired from the film after the first day of shooting because, according to Bigelow, "the character wasn't working in the story." Strong later persuaded her to give him another part in the film. He initially was interested in playing Roman Roy, the family's wisecracking youngest son, but after the part was given to Kieran Culkin, Strong auditioned for the part of the middle son, Kendall Roy. The role was a career breakthrough for him; Strong's performance in the role has received universal acclaim from critics, and his performance won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2020. and an Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. TVLine named Strong "Performer of the Year" in 2021 for his work on Succession, writing, "For three seasons now, Strong has been carefully crafting a portrait of a little boy lost, a man who knows how to play the corporate hero but doesn't know how to be OK with himself.... Succession remains one of the best shows on television in large part because Strong's central performance is so complex and so fascinating."

Strong appeared in Guy Ritchie's action comedy The Gentlemen (2019), a film that he did not want to discuss on the record with The New Yorker. For his performance he was nominated for an Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. The film received critical acclaim as well as six nominations in the 93rd Academy Awards. He acted in the James Gray coming-of-age drama Armageddon Time (2022) alongside Anne Hathaway and Hopkins. The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Justin Chang of NPR wrote, "Strong is terrific — and very un-Kendall Roy-like — as Paul's father, a plumber with a big heart and a fierce temper".

2024–present: Career expansion In 2024, Strong returned to Broadway in the Amy Herzog adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People directed by Sam Gold. He garnered universal acclaim and won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a principled doctor who attempts to alert the public that their town's spa water is contaminated. He next portrayed Roy Cohn, a ruthless lawyer and mentor to Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, in the biographical drama The Apprentice, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Owen Gleiberman of Variety described his performance as "magnetic." Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter noted, "It's to Strong's credit that, while playing an odious, utterly irredeemable human being, he finds notes of pathos in Cohn's decline." For his work, Strong was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, an Actor Award, and a Golden Globe Award.

In 2025, Strong was invited to serve as a jury member at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. He was also invited to join the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Strong portrayed Jon Landau, manager for Bruce Springsteen, in the biographical film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere released on October 24, 2025. The film is based on the book of the same name about the making of Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska. Also that year, Strong served as executive producer on Netflix documentary The White House Effect.

Strong will portray Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning, a companion piece to The Social Network (2010), with Sorkin writing and directing, making this the third time they've worked together. Strong is also set to star in and produce 9/12, a Paramount+ series about the 9/11 first responders.

Acting philosophy and technique

Strong prepares intensely for his roles, often to replicate some aspect of the character whether or not it is prominent in his portrayal. He has stated, "I think you have to go through whatever the ordeal is that the character has to go through". For The Judge, where he played the main character's developmentally disabled younger brother, he spent time with an autistic man as Hoffman had for Rain Man, and he requested personalized props for the character not mentioned in the script. "All I know is, he crosses the Rubicon", said costar Robert Downey Jr.. In preparation for his Succession audition for Kendall Roy, he read Michael Wolff's biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his family, which mentions that Murdoch's son James is known for lacing his shoes very tightly; Strong thus did the same for the audition, believing that it expressed the character's "inner tensile strength". impacting his tibia and femur and requiring a leg brace. The take ultimately was not used.

Strong seldom rehearses, saying he wants "every scene to feel like I'm encountering a bear in the woods", an approach he admits may not be popular with his costars. On The Trial of the Chicago 7, Strong asked to be sprayed with tear gas. Director Sorkin stated "I don't like saying no to Jeremy... But there were 200 people in that scene and another seventy on the crew, so I declined to spray them with poison gas". Matthew Macfadyen described Strong's techniques as "not the main event... That's not to say that's wrong. That's just not useful". Brian Cox, who portrayed Strong's character's father on the show, expressed his concerns that Strong's intense approach to acting may lead to early burnout. However, he added that Strong's performance "is always extraordinary and excellent". During the shooting of The Big Short, Strong similarly reduced the interactions with his cast mates, although he admitted to having a good time, he also found it to be "distracting" and "depleting," recalling, "These guys can all be in a comedy, but I need to feel like I’m in a global warming catastrophe documentary."

Along with Day-Lewis, Hoffman, and Pacino, Strong has mentioned Hopkins, Denzel Washington, Isabelle Huppert, Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, Ian Holm, and Kenneth Branagh as his influences.

Personal life In 2016, Strong married Emma Wall, a Danish psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker; they met four years earlier at a party in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. They live in New York and have homes in Copenhagen and Tisvilde. Strong has said he is not a religious person.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Jon Landau

Mark Zuckerberg Completed Television

Theater

Awards and nominations

Strong has received numerous accolades over his career for his roles on stage and screen. For his role as Kendall Roy in the HBO drama series Succession (2018–2023) he received a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Critics' Choice Television Award as Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series, in addition to two Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. For his role as Doctor Thomas Stockmann in the Broadway revival of the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People he received the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play. Most recently he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, Actor Award and a Golden Globe Award for his role as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice.