Steve Zahn

Steve Zahn is an American actor and comedian whose career has moved from 1990s indie comedy to studio franchises, prestige television and more dramatic character work. Born Steven James Zahn in Marshall, Minnesota, in 1967, he grew up partly in Minnesota and became active in school performance before pursuing theatre training. He studied within the American Repertory Theater/Harvard training environment and began his professional career on stage, including a national tour of Bye Bye Birdie and Off-Broadway work. Those theatre roots are easy to see in his screen presence: Zahn often plays loose, funny characters, but his timing is precise and his performances are carefully built.

Zahn's first major wave of visibility came in the 1990s. After Reality Bites, he appeared in That Thing You Do!, You've Got Mail and Out of Sight, helping define a screen persona that audiences associated with affable slackers, sidekicks and comic eccentrics. He won an Independent Spirit Award for Happy, Texas, a performance that showed how his comic energy could carry a film rather than simply decorate someone else's story.

As his career developed, Zahn expanded beyond the easygoing comic types. In Riding in Cars with Boys and Shattered Glass he played more complicated men whose charm could turn evasive or irresponsible. Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn gave him one of his most demanding dramatic parts as Duane Martin, a prisoner of war; Zahn's physical transformation and restrained fear brought new critical attention. He also appeared in films including Joy Ride, Sahara, Sunshine Cleaning, Dallas Buyers Club, Captain Fantastic and War for the Planet of the Apes, where his motion-capture performance as Bad Ape blended comedy, loneliness and survival instinct.