Christopher Whitelaw Pine (born August 26, 1980) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot film series (2009–2016) and Steve Trevor in the DC Extended Universe films Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).
Pine rose to prominence for his roles in the romantic comedies The Princess Diaries 2 (2004) and Just My Luck (2006). His roles include Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods (2014), Jack Ryan in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), Bernie Webber in The Finest Hours (2016), and Robert the Bruce in Outlaw King (2018). He starred in Unstoppable (2010), Rise of the Guardians (2012), Hell or High Water (2016), The Contractor (2022), Don't Worry Darling (2022), and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023). Pine made his directorial debut with Poolman (2023). In 2025, he acted for the first time in a non-English role (Italian) in the movie The Kidnapping of Arabella, which was praised at the 2025 Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti category.
Early life and education
Pine was born on August 26, 1980 in Los Angeles, California. His father, Robert Pine, is an actor who co-starred on CHiPs as Sergeant Joseph Getraer, while his mother, Gwynne Gilford, is a former actress who became a psychotherapist. He has an older sister, Katherine, who has also acted.
His maternal grandmother, Anne Gwynne, was a Hollywood actress. His maternal grandfather, Max M. Gilford, who came from a Russian Jewish family, was an attorney who was elected president of the Hollywood Bar Association. His uncle, Greg Max Gilford, is a former recording artist for Dunhill Records, who became a computer consultant, then later a recovery mentor/support specialist for United Healthcare.
Pine attended the Oakwood School for high school, which he described as "a Jewish liberal school in the Valley," then went on to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. While in college, Pine wanted to find a "place where he'd belong", and was not interested in joining a fraternity. Instead, he began doing theater. As a member of the UC Berkeley Theater Department, Pine performed in a Caryl Churchill play at La Val's Subterranean Theater and performed Orestes and Shakespeare at Zellerbach Hall.
Pine was an exchange student at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom for one year. After graduating from Berkeley, he was an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He also had a Berkeley professor who was an adjunct at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and Pine is often misstated as having studied at ACT himself.
Career
2003–2008: Early roles
Pine's first acting role was in a 2003 episode of ER; the same year, he also appeared in episodes of The Guardian and CSI: Miami. In 2004, he appeared in Why Germany? and in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Pine played the part of Nicholas Devereaux, the love interest of Anne Hathaway's leading character. In 2005, Pine appeared in an episode of the series Six Feet Under, as well as in Confession, an independent film that was released directly to video, and The Bulls, another short film.
Pine appeared in the television film Surrender, Dorothy which aired in early 2006. He played Jake Hardin in the American film Just My Luck, a 2006 romantic comedy in which he starred opposite Lindsay Lohan. Later that year, Pine appeared in the comedy Blind Dating and in the action film Smokin' Aces. Pine performed the one-man play The Atheist at Center Stage, New York, in late 2006. In 2007, he starred opposite Scott Wolf in the Los Angeles production of Neil LaBute's play Fat Pig, winning positive reviews for his depiction of a competitive alpha-male friend. He portrayed Napa Valley vintner Bo Barrett in the 2008 film Bottle Shock.
2009–2016: Star Trek and worldwide recognition
In 2007, Pine turned down a role in a film adaptation of White Jazz to accept the part of James T. Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek film, which was released to critical and viewer acclaim in May of that year. That same month, he made a brief appearance promoting the film on Saturday Night Live with co-stars Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy. During the rest of the summer of 2009, he appeared in the Los Angeles production of the Beau Willimon play Farragut North. Pine appeared in the Los Angeles production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore during the summer of 2010, for which he won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle's lead appearance award.
In the fall of 2009, Pine began work on the action film Unstoppable, directed by Tony Scott and written by Mark Bomback, which was released in November 2010. In the film, he played a young train conductor who helped a veteran railroad engineer (Denzel Washington) stop an unmanned, half-mile-long, runaway freight train carrying toxic liquids and poisonous gases from wiping out a nearby city. The Hollywood Reporter named Pine as one of the young male actors who are "pushing—or being pushed" into taking over Hollywood as the new "A-List."
In 2011, Pine sat down with William Shatner, the actor who originated the role of Captain Kirk more than 40 years earlier, for the feature-length documentary The Captains, which Shatner wrote and directed. The film had Shatner interview Pine about his career and how taking the role of Kirk felt.
Pine filmed the romantic comedy This Means War with Reese Witherspoon and Tom Hardy during the fall of 2010 in Vancouver. This Means War was released in February 2012. Pine voiced the character of Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians. Pine co-starred with Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, and Michelle Pfeiffer in the family drama People Like Us, which was filmed in early 2011 and released in June 2012. He reprised the role of Kirk in the sequel to 2009's Star Trek, titled Star Trek Into Darkness, released in the US on May 15, 2013.
In 2009, Pine entered talks to play CIA analyst Jack Ryan in a reboot of Tom Clancy's novels. He starred in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which was released in 2014. Pine was the fourth actor to play the character, after Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. In 2014, Pine was in talks to star in a thriller about the United States Coast Guard, The Finest Hours, released in January 2016. He guest-starred in Netflix's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp and lent his voice for SuperMansion in 2015.
In May 2015, Pine was confirmed to play one of the Howard brothers along with Ben Foster in Hell or High Water (originally called Comancheria). After premiering at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the film was released in August 2016. Clayton Davis of Variety found Pine's performance in the film to be his best, writing that Pine "shows his reserved range as a leading man." Pine reprised the role of Kirk in Star Trek Beyond. Filming began in June 2015 in Canada, and the film was released in the US in July 2016. Also in July 2016, he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for his work on the series SuperMansion. That same year, Pine was featured on singer Barbra Streisand's album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, in which the two duetted on a medley of the songs "I'll Be Seeing You" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face".
2017–present: Wonder Woman and continued film roles
In 2015, Pine was cast as Steve Trevor, opposite Gal Gadot, in the superhero film Wonder Woman. The film was released in June 2017 to positive reviews. Also in 2017, he reprised his roles in the second season of SuperMansion and the film Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, guest-starred in the third season of Angie Tribeca (including an episode where his father was also a guest star), and narrated the season two finale episode of National Geographic's Breakthrough.
In 2018, Pine played Dr. Alexander Murry in the fantasy film A Wrinkle in Time, based on the novel of the same name, and starred as Robert the Bruce in Outlaw King. The…