Jeff Cohen (actor)
| Jeff Cohen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Jeffrey Bertan McMahon June 25, 1974 Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Occupation | Attorney, former actor |
Jeffrey Bertan Cohen, J.D. (born Jeffrey Bertan McMahon; June 25, 1974) is an American attorney (and founding partner of Cohen & Gardner, LLP) and former child actor best remembered for appearing as Chunk in the 1985 Steven Spielberg production The Goonies.
Cohen was born Jeffrey Bertan McMahon in Los Angeles. He took his stage name from the maiden name of his mother, Elaine Cohen. Since the part of "Chunk" entailed a lot of mockery at Cohen's considerable girth, he took up high school football and has lost a great deal of weight as an adult. Cohen was one of the children describing words to the contestants on the 1982–83 CBS game show Child's Play, and during the summer of 1985 he appeared as a celebrity on Body Language. According to a 2014 story on Cohen in the magazine of the American Bar Association, the ABA Journal, "puberty hit and forced Cohen into early retirement."
Cohen's sister, Eydie Faye, is a playwright and actress. In the final scene of The Goonies, when the families gather on the beach, Faye has a cameo as Chunk's sister.
Cohen attended the University of California, Berkeley, earning a B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business in 1996. While at UC Berkeley, Cohen was a resident assistant during the 1994–1995 academic year at Unit I's Putnam Hall and later on in Norton Hall. He became President of the Associated Students; his campaign posters featured a picture of himself from his Goonies days and the simple slogan "Chunk for president". He was also known for his energy at football games serving as the "Mic-Man" and performing the now-famous Truffle Shuffle on the sidelines to raise applause from the crowd. While at Berkeley, Cohen also was initiated as a brother into the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity.
Cohen also used introductions from Goonies director Richard Donner to get summer jobs on the business side of movie studios; he would say about that time in the ABA Journal story, "I grew up loving The Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, but suddenly I had a new crop of heroes." He chose to pursue a legal career upon finding out that many of the most important figures on the business side of Hollywood had law degrees.
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