Owen Kline

Owen Joseph Kline (born October 14, 1991) is an American filmmaker and actor. He is best known for his directorial debut Funny Pages (2022) and his performance as Frank Berkman in The Squid and the Whale (2005). Early life Kline was born and raised in New York City, to actor Kevin Kline and actress Phoebe Cates. His father is of German-Jewish and Irish descent, and his mother has Russian-Jewish and Chinese ancestry. He has one younger sister, Greta Kline, a musician/singer-songwriter. At age 7, he fell ill, and during a two-week stay in the hospital was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. He acted in his adolescence in the independent films The Anniversary Party (2001) and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and The Whale (2005), but did not pursue a subsequent career in acting, instead remaining in junior high school. He performed in provocative novelty bands in high school, released prank call CDs, and created xeroxed comics, joke books and zines. He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, studying illustration and film. He worked as an assistant to the archivist at New York film museum Anthology Film Archives, and for musicologists Billy Miller and Miriam Linna at their Norton label and Kicks Books imprint. He crewed on early work of filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, and acted in their film John's Gone (2010), and in Michael M. Bilandic's films Hellaware (2013), and Jobe'z World (2018). Work In 2013 Kline wrote and directed the short comedy Fowl Play, about a group of low-rent criminals fooled into buying a hen for a cockfight in Flushing, Queens. He co-wrote and directed the short film Jazzy for Joe (2014), a narrative comedy about, and starring, New York broadcaster Joe Franklin raising an abandoned baby, which premiered at BAMcinemaFest 2015.