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Producer · Actor · Director · Writer

1981-06-02 · Queens, New York City, New York, USA · Male

51 series in the catalog

Jonathan Kolia Favreau ( FAV-roh; born October 19, 1966) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades including an Emmy Award and two Saturn Awards.

As an actor, Favreau has appeared in many films such as Rudy (1993), PCU (1994), Swingers (1996), Very Bad Things (1998), Deep Impact (1998), The Replacements (2000), Daredevil (2003), Wimbledon (2004), The Break-Up (2006), Four Christmases (2008), Couples Retreat (2009), I Love You, Man (2009), People Like Us (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Chef (2014).

As a filmmaker, Favreau has been significantly involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He directed, produced, and appeared as Happy Hogan in the films Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2 (2010). He also served as an executive producer or appeared as the character in the films The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

He has also directed the films Elf (2003), Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Chef (2014), The Jungle Book (2016), The Lion King (2019), and The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026). Favreau has been known for his work on the Star Wars franchise with Dave Filoni, creating the Disney+ original series The Mandalorian (2019–2023), which Filoni helped develop, with both serving as executive producers. Alongside Filoni, he serves as an executive producer on all of the show's spin-off series, including The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew. He produces films under his production company banner, Fairview Entertainment, and also presented the variety series Dinner for Five and the cooking series The Chef Show.

Early life

Favreau was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, on October 19, 1966, the only child of Madeleine, an elementary school teacher who died of leukemia in 1979, and Charles Favreau, a special education teacher. His mother was Ashkenazi Jewish and his father is a Catholic of Italian and French-Canadian ancestry. Favreau dropped out of Hebrew school to pursue acting. However, following his mother's death, both sides of his family worked to ensure he had a bar mitzvah ceremony.

Favreau graduated from The Bronx High School of Science, a school for gifted students, in 1984 and attended Queens College from 1984 to 1987, before dropping out. His friend from college, Mitchell Pollack, has said that Favreau went by the nickname "Johnny Hack" because of his abilities in the game Hacky Sack. He briefly worked for Bear Stearns on Wall Street before returning to Queens College for a semester in early 1988. He dropped out of college for good (a few credits shy of completing his degree), and moved to Chicago in the summer of 1988 to pursue a career in comedy. He performed at several Chicago improvisational theaters, including the ImprovOlympic and the Improv Institute.

Career

1992–2000: Early career

While in Chicago, Favreau landed his first film role alongside Sean Astin as tutor D-Bob in the sleeper hit Rudy (1993). Favreau met Vince Vaughn – who played a small role in this film – during shooting. The next year, he appeared in the college film PCU alongside Jeremy Piven, and the 1994 episode of Seinfeld titled "The Fire" as Eric the Clown.

Favreau then moved to Los Angeles, where he made his breakthrough in 1996 as an actor-screenwriter with the film Swingers, which was also Vaughn's breakthrough role as the character Trent Walker, a foil to Favreau's heartbroken Mike Peters. In 1997, he appeared on the television sitcom Friends, portraying Pete Becker – Monica Geller's millionaire boyfriend who competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) – for several episodes. Favreau made appearances in the sketch-comedy series, Tracey Takes On... in both 1996 and 1997.

Favreau landed the role of Gus Partenza in Deep Impact (1998), and that same year rejoined Piven in Very Bad Things (1998). In 1999, he starred in the television film Rocky Marciano, based on the life of world heavyweight champion, Rocky Marciano. He later appeared in Love & Sex (2000), co-starring Famke Janssen. Favreau appeared in 2000's The Replacements as maniacal linebacker Daniel Bateman, and that same year he played himself in The Sopranos episode "D-Girl", as a Hollywood director who feigns interest in developing mob associate Christopher Moltisanti's screenplay in order to collect material for his own screenplay.

2001–2015: Actor–director

In 2001, he made his film directorial debut with another self-penned screenplay, Made. Made once again teamed him up with his Swingers co-star Vince Vaughn. Favreau also starred in a TV series called Dinner for Five, which aired on the cable TV channel IFC from 2001 to 2005.

He was a guest-director for an episode of the college dramedy Undeclared in 2001, and Favreau got some screen time as lawyer Foggy Nelson in the 2003 movie Daredevil (2003) (considerably more in the director's cut version). He also starred in The Big Empty (2003), directed by Steve Anderson. His character was John Person, an out of work actor given a strange mission to deliver a blue suitcase to a man named Cowboy in the desert. Favreau is credited as a screenwriter for the 2002 film The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest.

He scored his first financial success as a director of the hit comedy Elf (2003) starring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, James Caan, and Peter Dinklage. Also in 2003, Favreau had a small part in Something's Gotta Give (a film starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson); Favreau played Leo, Harry Sanborn's (Nicholson) personal assistant, who visited Harry in the hospital. In 2005, Favreau directed the film adaptation of the children's book Zathura. It received positive reviews, but was not commercially successful. Favreau continued to make regular appearances in film and television. He reunited with friend Vaughn in the romantic comedy The Break-Up and appeared in My Name Is Earl as a reprehensible fast food manager. Favreau also made a guest appearance in Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show.

Also in 2005, Favreau appeared as a guest judge and executive representative of Sony Corporation in week five of the NBC business-focused primetime reality TV show, The Apprentice. He was called upon to judge the efforts of the show's two teams of contestants, who were assigned the task of designing and building a float to publicize his 2005 Sony Pictures movie, Zathura: A Space Adventure.

On April 28, 2006, it was announced that Favreau was signed to direct the long-awaited Iron Man movie. Released on May 2, 2008, the film was a huge critical and commercial success, solidifying Favreau's reputation as a director. In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is one of three superhero movies to achieve this honor alongside Richard Donner's Superman and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Iron Man was the first Marvel-produced movie under their alliance with Paramount, and Favreau served as the director and an executive producer. During early scenes in Iron Man, Favreau appears as Tony Stark's driver, Happy Hogan. He wrote two issues of a planned mini-series for Marvel Knights titled Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas, that debuted in September 2008 before being canceled in November 2008. Favreau also directed and executive produced the film's sequel, Iron Man 2. Favreau said in December 2010 that he would not direct Iron Man 3 but remain an executive producer.

Favreau was the third director attached to John Carter, the film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' swashbuckling space hero. While he did not ultimately direct it, he did appear in a cameo in the film, as a bookie.

In 2008, he played Denver, a bully-type bigger brother to Vaughn in…