Jeff Daniels

Jeffrey Warren Daniels (born February 19, 1955) is an American actor and musician. He is known for his work on stage and screen playing diverse characters switching between comedy and drama. He is the recipient of several accolades, including two Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for five Golden Globe Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Tony Awards.

He made his film debut in Miloš Forman's drama Ragtime (1981) followed by James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment (1983), and Mike Nichols's Heartburn (1986). He then received three Golden Globe Award nominations for Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986), and Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale (2005). He starred in a variety of genre films such as Arachnophobia (1990), Gettysburg (1993), Speed (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), Fly Away Home (1996), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Pleasantville (1998), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), RV (2006) and Dumb and Dumber To (2014). He also took roles in critically acclaimed films such as The Hours (2002), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Infamous (2006), Looper (2012), Steve Jobs (2015), and The Martian (2015).

From 2012 to 2014, Daniels starred as Will McAvoy in the HBO political drama series The Newsroom, for which he won the 2013 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. He won a second Primetime Emmy Award in 2018 for his performance in the Netflix miniseries Godless (2017). He has portrayed real life figures such as John P. O'Neill in the Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower (2018) and FBI director James Comey in The Comey Rule (2020) for Showtime.

Daniels is also known for his roles on stage, making his Broadway debut in Gemini (1977). He went on to receive three nominations for the Tony Best Actor in a Play for his roles in Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage (2009), David Harrower's Blackbird (2016), and Aaron Sorkin's To Kill a Mockingbird (2018–2021). He is the founder and current executive director of the Chelsea, Michigan, Purple Rose Theatre Company.