Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Piven
Piven in February 2009
Born	Jeremy Samuel Piven (1965-07-26) July 26, 1965 (age 51) Manhattan, New York, U.S
Residence	Malibu, California
Alma mater	Drake University (attended but did not graduate)
Occupation	Actor, producer
Years active	1982–present
Family	Shira Piven (sister) Adam McKay (brother-in-law)

Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his roles as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmy Awards, and as Spence Kovak on Ellen DeGeneres's sitcom Ellen. He also starred in the British period drama Mr Selfridge, which tells the story of the man who created the luxury English department store chain Selfridges.

Piven is a native of New York City, born in Manhattan, the son of Byrne Piven (1929-2002) and Joyce Hiller Piven (née Goldstein), both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Piven was raised in a Reconstructionist Jewish household. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin as a teenager. He played Bernardo in West Side Story there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he departed after his sophomore year to attend New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He left Tisch during his senior year to pursue his acting career and is an alumnus of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute (NTI) at the The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center 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.