Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson (born Mark Jake Johnson Weinberger; May 28, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has starred as Nick Miller in the Fox sitcom New Girl (2011–2018), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2013. He has also voiced a version of Spider-Man in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its 2023 sequel. Johnson has also starred in Let's Be Cops (2014), and appeared in Paper Heart (2009), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), 21 Jump Street (2012), Jurassic World (2015), The Mummy (2017), and Tag (2018). Since 2022, he has starred in the comedy series Minx. Early life Johnson was born on May 28, 1978 in Evanston, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, to Ken Weinberger, who owned a car dealership, and Eve Johnson, an artist who made stained glass windows. He was named after his maternal uncle, Mark Johnson, who died at the age of 26 in a motorcycle accident in 1977, a year before Jake was born. Johnson attended New Trier High School in Winnetka. His parents divorced when he was two, and he and his older siblings, brother Dan and sister Rachel, were raised by his single mother. Johnson then took his mother's last name during high school. He has stated that when he was 17, his father resurfaced and now they are close. His father Ken died in 2021. Career Johnson grew up a fan of the Second City improv troupe. Raised in Wilmette, he graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka and started his post-secondary education at the University of Iowa. While in Iowa City, he wrote a play, which wound up earning him admission to the Dramatic Writing Department at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, followed by the 2002 John Golden Playwriting Prize and the Sloan Fellowship for Screenwriting. The New York City off-Broadway group The Ensemble Studio Theater produced his play Cousins.