Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (; born February 17, 1981) is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in 500 Days of Summer (2009) and 50/50 (2011). He is the founder of the online media platform HitRecord whose projects such as HitRecord on TV (2014–15) and Create Together (2020) won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Interactive Program.

Born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family, Gordon-Levitt began his acting career as a child, appearing in the films A River Runs Through It (1992), Holy Matrimony (1994), and Angels in the Outfield (1994), which earned him a Young Artist Award and a Saturn Award nomination. He played the role of Tommy Solomon in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001). He had a supporting role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), starred in Manic (2001), and voiced Jim Hawkins in the Disney animated film Treasure Planet (2002) before taking a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but he dropped out in 2004 to resume his acting career.

Since returning to acting, Gordon-Levitt has starred in Mysterious Skin (2004), Brick (2005), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Looper (2012), and Lincoln (2012). He portrayed Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed film The Walk (2015) and whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oliver Stone film Snowden (2016). In 2020, he had a supporting role in the legal drama The Trial of the Chicago 7. In 2024, he portrayed Detective Bobby Abbott in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.

In 2013, he wrote and directed Don Jon, a comedy-drama film that was released to positive reviews and earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. He previously directed and edited two short films, both of which were released in 2010: Morgan M. Morgansen's Date with Destiny and Morgan and Destiny's Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo. In 2021, he wrote, directed, and starred in a comedy-drama series Mr. Corman on Apple TV+.

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt was born on February 17, 1981, in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood. He has stated that he is of "100% Ashkenazi Jewish" descent, from a family that is "not strictly religious". His parents were among the founders of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Gordon-Levitt's father, Dennis Levitt, was once the news director for the Pacifica Radio station KPFK-FM. His mother, Jane Gordon, ran for the United States Congress in California's 28th Congressional District in 1970 for the Peace and Freedom Party and finished last with 2.23% of the vote against Alphonzo Bell, the incumbent congressman; she met Dennis Levitt while she was working as the program guide editor for KPFK-FM. Gordon-Levitt's maternal grandfather, Michael Gordon (1909–1993), was a Hollywood film director. Gordon-Levitt had an older brother, Dan, a photographer and fire spinner who died in 2010 at the age of 36. Gordon-Levitt attended Van Nuys High School and graduated in 1999.

Gordon-Levitt joined a musical theater group at the age of four and played the Scarecrow in a production of The Wizard of Oz. Subsequently, he was approached by an agent and began appearing on television and in commercials for Sunny Jim peanut butter, Cocoa Puffs, Pop-Tarts, and Kinney Shoes.

At age six, he starred in several made-for-television films. In 1991, he played both David Collins and Daniel Collins in the Dark Shadows television series and appeared in the film A River Runs Through It. In the same year, he made an appearance as a boy who witnesses a murder in an episode of Quantum Leap. During 1992–93, he played in The Powers That Be, a sitcom starring John Forsythe, as a clever young boy named Pierce Van Horne. Also in 1992, he portrayed Gregory Kingsley in the made-for-TV film Switching Parents, based on Kingsley's real-life case of "divorcing" his parents. In 1994, he starred in the Disney film Angels in the Outfield as an orphan who sees angels. In 1996, he got the role of Tommy Solomon on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. The series ran for six seasons. The San Francisco Chronicle noted that Gordon-Levitt was a "Jewish kid playing an extraterrestrial pretending to be a Jewish kid". During the 1990s, he was frequently featured in teenager magazines. He also made an appearance on That '70s Show in 1998 as Buddy, a gay teenager who assumes his friend (main character Eric Forman) is gay, as well, in the episode "Eric's Buddy".

Gordon-Levitt had a supporting role in 1998's Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and voiced Jim Hawkins in Treasure Planet (2002), a Disney adaptation of the novel Treasure Island. In 2000, he began attending Columbia University. He studied history, literature, and French poetry. He became an avid francophile and a French speaker. He also dated actress Julia Stiles and the two lived in John Jay Hall. He said that moving to New York City from his hometown forced him to grow as a person. He dropped out in 2004 to concentrate on acting again.

Gordon-Levitt has said that he made a conscious decision to "be in good movies" after returning to acting. His films include 2001's drama Manic, which was set in a mental institution, Mysterious Skin (2004) in which he played a gay prostitute and child sexual abuse victim, and Brick (2005), a modern-day film noir set at San Clemente High School. In Brick, he had the lead role of Brendan Frye, a teen who becomes involved in an underground drug ring while investigating a murder. Brick received positive reviews, with The Minnesota Daily's critic commenting that Gordon-Levitt played the character "beautifully", saying the performance was "true to (the) film's style", "unfeeling but not disenchanted", and "sexy in the most ambiguous way". Another review describes the performance as "astounding".

In 2001, Gordon-Levitt made his debut on the New York stage to excellent reviews in the off-Broadway premiere of Austin Pendleton's Uncle Bob at the SoHo Playhouse. Gordon-Levitt starred opposite George Morfogen in the gritty, two-character play. The production was directed by Courtney Moorehead and produced by Steven Sendor.

In October 2013, Gordon-Levitt identified himself as a feminist, giving credit to his mother: "My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She was active in the movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The Hollywood movie industry has come a long way since its past. It certainly has a bad history of sexism, but it ain't all the way yet."

Gordon-Levitt has expressed support for the effective altruism movement. In 2017, he spoke at the Effective Altruism Global conference in San Francisco.

Following the October 7 attacks, Gordon-Levitt, (along with Gillian Anderson, Amy Poehler, LL Cool J, Steven Bartlett, Scott Galloway, and tech giants Google, Meta Platforms, and Intel, Amazon, Siemens, and Stripe, Inc.), pulled out of annual technology conference Web Summit following tweets by its CEO Paddy Cosgrave. Cosgrave had tweeted that during its military action in Gaza in the aftermath of October 7, Israel was guilty of committing war crimes.

In June 2026, Gordon-Levitt's name appeared in a leaked document as an attendee of an invite-only annual event organized by Dialog, an organization backed by Peter Thiel. Gordon-Levitt said that he had never met or interacted with Thiel, and that the conference had been ideologically diverse.

In September 2025, The New York Times released an opinion video of Gordon-Levitt talking about the dangers Meta's AI chatbot poses for kids. He said that as the father of an 8-year-old, the idea that kids were having "synthetic intimacy" with chatbots talking to minors made him "livid". The actor called Mark Zuckerberg out for choosing "lots and lots of money" over implementing safety regulations for minors' interactions with his company's AI tools.

Gordon-Levitt had an older brother, Daniel Gordon-Levitt. On October 4, 2010, Daniel was found dead in Hollywood, California, at the age of 36. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, Daniel's cause of death was "ketamine intoxication, with the injury occurring by intake of overdose". Joseph Gordon-Levitt has publicly disputed the claim that his brother's death was caused by a drug overdose.

Gordon-Levitt is married to Tasha McCauley, the founder and CEO of technology company Fellow Robots. McCauley was a member of the board of directors of OpenAI from 2018 until 2023, when she and the board's three other members voted to fire the company's CEO, Sam Altman; she left shortly after Altman returned a few weeks later. As of December 2023, McCauley is a adjunct senior management scientist at RAND Corporation and a board member of Effective Ventures, a federation of effective altruism organizations.