Topic: Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

Piven was born in Manhattan and grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, as a teenager. He played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents, Byrne Piven and Joyce Piven, both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop (as are Cusack's sisters Joan and Ann). Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school.

Piven's first significant role came in 1992 when he became a regular cast member on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, where he played the head writer Jerry. In 1993, he portrayed George Costanza on the show-within-a-show scene in the Seinfeld episode, "The Pilot". Piven has appeared in several successful films, including Lucas, Grosse Pointe Blank, Singles, Very Bad Things, The Family Man, Black Hawk Down, Heat, PCU, Old School, Rock N Rolla, Serendipity, Smokin' Aces, and Runaway Jury. He has also had brief cameo appearances in Rush Hour 2 and in the US release of Cars.