bio via Wikipedia.org

Jeff Daniels is an American actor. 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 Gettysburg (1993), Speed (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), 101 Dalmatians (1996), and Pleasantville (1998). 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.

via JeffDaniels.com

Well, mostly I act and whatever I did must have worked because I’m doing it more now than in any decade of my career which is not how they draw it up in Star School. In 1976, I drove to New York City to learn everything I didn’t know, achieving just enough success along the way to inch my way up the Serious Actor Ladder. As my career marched on, I appeared in over seventy films, numerous television shows, returned again and again to the theatre, and am currently riding a string of once in a lifetime roles in NEWSROOM, GODLESS, LOOMING TOWER, THE COMEY RULE and a year long run on Broadway as Atticus Finch in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

Much as I love acting, however, I don’t do it every day. The only thing I do every day, the only thing I want to do, the only thing I have to do, is play my acoustic guitar. Back in ’76, I bought a Guild D-40, tossed it into the backseat of a beat up Buick and chased a dream. I had no idea I was bringing along my best friend. The one I would need, the one I would turn to, the one I would rely on. And now, decades later, the one who knows what I’m all about.

Sometimes I’m asked if I’ll ever write a book and I always answer that I already have. It’s in my songs.