Jeremy Davies (actor)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the actor. For the doctor/exorcist, see Jeremy Davies.

Jeremy Davies (b. October 8, 1969, Traverse City, Michigan) is an American film and television actor. He is the second of four children, having an older brother, Josh, who is an Air Force Pilot; a younger brother, Zachary; and younger sister, Katy. He was raised in Traverse City, Michigan during his early childhood, then moved to Kansas with his mother after his parents divorced. When his mother died of complications from Lupus in the mid 1970s, he went to live with his father and step-mother in Santa Barbara, California. They later moved to Rockford, Iowa, in 1986^{[citation needed]}.

Davies attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California.^{[citation needed]} His first role of note came as a bit part on an episode of Singer & Sons in 1990. Afterwards he performed on two episodes of The Wonder Years in 1992. He also had small roles in the NBC TV movie Shoot First: A Cop's Vengeance, and appeared as a "Scruffy Kid" in the pilot for a colonial era sitcom called 1775. Among the few substantial roles he won during this time was co-starring as a youth in Guncrazy, a Showtime thriller, as well as a guest appearance on Melrose Place.

In 1993, Davies was cast in a TV commercial for Subaru in which his "character" compares the car to punk rock. The commercial was noticed by numerous casting directors and industry forces. Soon after, Davies found himself being sent feature film scripts. He began building a repertoire with films such as Twister, and in 1998 he landed a pivotal role in the Steven Spielberg war-epic Saving Private Ryan as an American GI linguist in Normandy, France, recruited just after D-Day by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) to act as a translator on a dangerous mission to rescue a lone, lost paratrooper (Matt Damon). Davies's performance was well-received, and he has gone on to star in numerous films, including Solaris with George Clooney.