Biography, Award-Winning Actor, The Bear

Latest News: Jeremy Allen White Wins His First Emmy Award for The Bear

Jeremy Allen White might be head chef on The Bear, but he’s cleaning up at this year’s awards season. A little more than a week after accepting a Golden Globe for his performance as Carmy, White won his first Emmy Award on January 15.

“I love this show so much. It filled me up. It gave me a passion, set a fire in me to match the beautiful work done by Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo,” the 32-year-old said in his acceptance speech for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Storer is the creator of the FX series and shares showrunning duties with Calo.

White also gave several shoutouts to family, including his parents. His dad, Richard, was in the audience. His mom, Eloise, previously attended the 2023 SAG Awards with White, where he also took home a trophy for the role. Then, he dedicated his Emmy to his daughters, Ezer and Dolores.

The Bear collected several Emmys at the ceremony, including Outstanding Comedy Series and trophies for White’s co-stars Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Fans are eagerly awaiting the show’s third season. White recently shared he would be getting back in the kitchen this month, and production would begin in February or March. No release date has been announced.

Who Is Jeremy Allen White?

Actor Jeremy Allen White is best known for his leading role in the acclaimed FX series The Bear. His performance as the gifted but tormented chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto has earned him a 2023 Primetime Emmy Award, as well as two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics Choice Award. White’s breakout role was as Lip Gallagher in the Showtime television series Shameless, which premiered in 2011. White was cast in the series almost immediately after graduating from high school and remained a part of the cast of the show’s entire 10-year run. His newest roles are in the 2023 movies Fingernails and The Iron Claw.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Jeremy Allen White
BORN: February 17, 1991
BIRTHPLACE: Brooklyn, New York
SPOUSE: Addison Timlin (2019-2023; separated)
CHILDREN: Ezer and Dolores
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Early Life

Jeremy Allen White was born on February 17, 1991, in New York City. His parents, Eloise Zeigler and Richard White, were both theater actors who moved to New York City in their early 20s to pursue Broadway careers before White was born. After having kids, White’s father started a business filming depositions, and his mother worked in the education field. “I’d always known that [acting] was something they were always very interested in,” White said of his parents.

White grew up in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood and developed an interest in the arts from an early age. He studied ballet, jazz, and tap dance throughout elementary school, but at age 11, he became disappointed with the lack of rigor at his middle school dance program. “I didn’t think it was serious enough for me. [I was] so obnoxious,” he said. White decided to pursue acting instead, participating in cattle calls for movie, theater, and commercial roles that eventually led to him getting an agent.

White wanted to drop out of high school to pursue acting full-time, saying, “I wasn’t a bad kid, I just hated school. I knew it wasn’t going to help me.” His parents insisted he stay until graduation but let him intern at a casting agency on the side as a compromise. After graduating, White attended the prestigious Professional Performing Arts School in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.

Biographies of Other Up-and-Coming Actors

Early Career and Shameless

White’s first acting roles were in the coming-of-age movie Beautiful Ohio (2006) and on the legal drama series Conviction that same year. White said during his early acting career, “My identity was really, really wrapped up in my profession. If that wasn’t going well, nothing was going well. If that was going well, everything felt really fantastic.” White recalled feeling very self-conscious while watching his performance in the film Afterschool (2008) at the Cannes Film Festival at age 17, saying he tended to get “too critical of myself and drive myself crazy.”

Shameless stars William H. Macy and Jeremy Allen White attend a Season 9 watch party in September 2018.

Almost directly out of high school, he was cast in his breakthrough role on the Showtime comedy-drama series Shameless. White joined an ensemble cast portraying a poor, dysfunctional family in the South Side neighborhood of Chicago. He played Phillip “Lip” Gallagher, the eldest son of protagonist Frank Gallagher, portrayed by William H. Macy. White’s character was a highly intelligent straight-A student who struggles with alcohol addiction and hatches numerous schemes to help financially support the family, including selling beer and weed from an ice cream truck and by taking SAT exams for other students.

White moved to Los Angeles at age 18 for the role, before he even knew how to drive. “I didn't have a community outside of the show when I first got there, and I felt super isolated,” he said, adding there was “something kind of romantic” about the loneliness of that period. White didn’t have cable TV while performing in Shameless, so he had to watch the show illegally.

Performing on the show’s entire 10-year run, from 2011 to 2021, was a transformative experience for him. “I was learning a lot about how to behave as a person outside of an actor,” White said. “We learned how to be, I think, decent people on that show, too.” The cast got along very well, and he said, “having Macy watching over you at all times makes you try that much harder to impress.” White was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards in 2014 for his work in the show’s fourth season.

Although the series was a positive experience, White said he was relieved when it ended: “I love Shameless so much. I love everybody that was a part of it, and the experience was incredible. But I’m not sure if shows are meant to go that long.” White also said he had doubts about his future acting career after leaving Shameless. “There was a period where I stopped feeling like an actor, and I started feeling like I was just here to do this show,” he said. “It was an upsetting head space to be in. When it was going to end, I was questioning: Maybe I do just exist on this show. What else is there? Am I an actor?”

The Bear

Jeremy Allen White portrays chef Carmy Berzatto on FX’s hit series The Bear.

White appeared in several movies during his time on Shameless, including Twelve (2010), Bad Turn Worse (2013), Movie 43 (2013), After Everything (2018), and The Rental (2020). In 2018, he also had a role in the Amazon Prime Video thriller series Homecoming, which starred Julia Roberts and Bobby Cannavale.

In 2022, White was cast in the lead role of the FX comedy-drama series The Bear. He portrays Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a gifted but tormented New York City chef who returns to his hometown of Chicago to take over a failing sandwich shop that his brother left him after committing suicide. White first got the script around the time his role on Shameless was ending, and he was initially concerned there were too many similarities between Carmy and his character on Shameless, another talented but troubled young man from Chicago. Ultimately, however, he was drawn to the quality of the writing on The Bear, adding, “I think I was too concerned with what other people might think. I also knew that if I said no to this, that whoever ended up doing it, I would hate them forever.”

Yes, chef, you can watch both seasons of The Bear on Hulu

The Bear creator Christopher Storer chose White for the role because of his “warmth and intelligence” and because “there’s something a little dangerous to him.” White said of his character, “When you meet him, he’s the sweetest kid ever, and he’s got these piercing eyes that you can’t help but be drawn to. But then you see in his performance that he can be equally charming and funny as he can be scary and tense, which is really tricky to do.” White was attracted to Carmy’s vulnerability, saying: “My heart really broke for him. [He]’s obviously gone through this really traumatic thing right before you meet him, which made him interesting. I realized that Carmy’s identity was just completely wrapped up in being a chef and being really successful at it. And, I don’t know, that made the rest of his life very lonely.”

White could barely cook when he accepted the role, calling himself “useless in a kitchen.” To prepare for the show, he and co-star Ayo Edebiri attended classes at the Institute of Culinary Education. White also briefly worked at the Michelin-starred Pasjoli restaurant under chef Dave Beran and studied The Frankies Spuntino cookbook on his own. “Before The Bear, I had never really focused that much on a skill for a job,” White said. “And it is such an amazing way to understand character. It feels like a cheat code or something.” White also repeatedly watched Al Pacino’s performance as a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) to perfect Carmy’s mental struggles, and he worked with a friend who is a tattoo artist to create all of his character’s tattoos.

The Bear, now two seasons in with a third on the way, has proven to be very popular and has received rave reviews, with many critics praising White’s performance in particular. The New Yorker said he brings “rumpled intensity” to the part, and IndieWire called his performance a “magnetic turn.” He drew particular praise for a seven-minute monologue in the first season finale, in which he tells an Al-Anon meeting about the life and death of his brother and how it influenced his career as a chef. InStyle wrote: “The power of that scene is palpable through the screen as a viewer, and that’s precisely due to White’s insistence that he give every take his all.” White said of the monologue: “It was such a blueprint to Carmy and his trauma and where he’s been coming from since you’ve met him… What I wanted to do was [have it feel] like Carmy was making these discoveries for the first time, in front of an audience.”

Many fans have written social media posts about how attractive White and his character on The Bear are, which the actor has largely shrugged off: “I think we’re both pretty good at not paying too much attention… I have a pretty healthy distance from it all.” White said he was surprised by the reaction, however, since his character on The Bear is so singularly focused on his work, there is little romance and almost no sex on the show.

White has won several awards for his performance, including a 2023 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He also took home back-to-back Golden Globes for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 2023 and 2024. The part previously earned him wins at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Critics Choice Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy Series, both in 2023.

Newest Movie Roles: Fingernails and The Iron Claw

White’s success in The Bear significantly increased his stature and popularity, leading to appearances in commercials alongside high-profile stars like Matt Damon, Zoe Saldaña, and Ludacris. He appeared in the 2023 independent film Fremont, directed and co-written by Babak Jalali, in the small but notable part as a lonely mechanic.

In early November 2023, he had a role in the Apple TV+ science-fiction love story Fingernails. “Jeremy is the one-take actor. I mean, from the first take, you always have the best. You don’t need another one,” Christos Nikou, the movie’s director, previously told Vanity Fair. “For me, he’s the new Ryan Gosling.” Critics were mostly underwhelmed by the movie but praised the performances of White and his co-stars Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed.

His newest role is in the biographical sports film The Iron Claw, out in theaters in late December 2023. The Iron Claw is about the Von Erich professional wrestling family. White portrays real-life wrestler Kerry Von Erich, one of six brothers in the family that includes Kevin Von Erich (played by Zac Efron). “I had never played a real person before,” White, told British GQ. “And it’s so frightening, because someone’s life is being investigated.” He also said it was “really scary” when Kerry’s daughters visited to set during filming.

Tragic and True

White received training from professional wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr. to apparent success. “He could wrestle professionally,” the movie’s director Sean Durkin said. “He had this natural ability that our wrestling coaches said was just really, really rare.”

He also had to consume a tremendous amount of food to bulk up for the role. “To be honest, you don’t feel great,” White said of the amount of eating he did for the part. “Trying to get that big, it’s no way to live.” He also spent a lot of time lifting weights while avoiding cardio, meaning he had to skip out on his regular running routine.

Wife and Children

Jeremy Allen White and Addison Timlin attended the 2023 Golden Globe Awards on January 10. The couple is now separated.

White married actor Addison Timlin in October 2019. They first met in high school; Timlin later wrote to him on Instagram: “When we were 14 years old and I saw you perform for the first time in drama class, I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.” The two also appeared together in the 2008 film Afterschool. Timlin filed for divorce in May 2023.

White and Timlin have two daughters together named Ezer and Dolores “Dolly”, who were born in 2018 and 2020 respectively. “I learn a lot from them,” White said in a 2022 interview. “I feel like in a lot of ways, they’re teaching me all the time how to be better: how to be better to them; how to be better to my wife, my friends, my parents, my sister.” Actor Dakota Johnson is the godmother of the two girls.

A joint custody agreement filed around October 2023 outlines that White must regularly use a professional breathalyzer in order to spend time with his children. He is also required to attend individual therapy every week and at least two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per week.

Amid the ongoing divorce filings, White has been romantically linked to Grammy-winning singer Rosalía.

Quotes

• I think every restaurant is a miracle. It’s constant problem-solving, and nothing’s ever going great.
• What I find attractive in people is a determination. If you’re truly good at something, that’s incredibly attractive.
• He seemed to be so incredibly lonely and uncomfortable with himself, but also very determined and, I mean, very skilled in what he does. [of his character on The Bear]

Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.

Adrienne directs the daily news operation and content production for Biography.com. She joined the staff in October 2022 and most recently worked as an editor for Popular Mechanics, Runner’s World, and Bicycling. Adrienne has served as editor-in-chief of two regional print magazines, and her work has won several awards, including the Best Explanatory Journalism award from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. Her current working theory is that people are the point of life, and she’s fascinated by everyone who (and every system that) creates our societal norms. When she’s not behind the news desk, find her hiking, working on her latest cocktail project, or eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. 

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