Jeremy Davies

Jeremy Davies has made a name for himself playing a series of damaged and offbeat characters that highlight the young actor's considerable talents. Born October 28, 1969, in Rockford, IA, the skinny, dark-haired Davies trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, CA. After making his television debut in a Suzuki commercial, he worked on various television shows. The actor made his film debut in the Drew Barrymore film Guncrazy (1992), but it was not until his turn as a young man being manipulated into an Oedipal relationship by his mother in David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey (1994) that the actor began to garner wide respect and recognition. The film earned the actor considerable rave reviews, indie credibility, and an eventual role in the Jodie Foster movie Nell.

In 1997, Davies went on to do The Locusts, co-starring Ashley Judd and Vince Vaughn. His role as Flyboy, the emotionally crippled son of an abusive mother, further added to the actor's reputation of playing victimized, internally conflicted young men. He next played a similarly conflicted character in the Mark Pellington adaptation of Dan Wakefield's coming-of-age novel Going All the Way, in which he co-starred with Ben Affleck. Davies' knack for choosing roles that allow him to go beyond Hollywood's conventions and mine the complexities of the human spirit was further reflected in his portrayal of the battle-shy Corporal Upham in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and his role as a despondent officer in Ravenous (1999). 2001 found Davies stepping in front of the camera as a director whose attempt at finishing a film with a troubled production history proves exceptionally grating in CQ, the directorial debut of the legendary Francis Ford Coppola's son Roman Coppola.

Davies two most memorable roles in 2002 saw him developing a twitchy eccentricity that would become a trademark in many of his films. The dark sexual comedy Secretary had him as a lovelorn suitor opposite a masochistic Maggie Gyllenhal and the sci-fi drama Solaris offered him the opportunity to work under the direction of Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh.

Having proven time and again his ability to pull off quirky, Davies tried his hand at all-out madness in 2004 when he starred as the infamous Charles Manson in the made-for-television remake of Helter Skelter. - Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide