After enjoying a successful career as a child and teen actor in a string of lightweight features and on the popular NBC series “3rd Rock from the Sun” (1996-2001), Joseph Gordon-Levitt re-invented himself as a formidable adult actor in a string of critically acclaimed independent features.
Born Feb. 17, 1981 in Los Angeles, CA, Gordon-Levitt’s acting career began at age of six, with supporting roles in the television movies “Stranger on My Land” (1988), starring Tommy Lee Jones and “Settle the Score” (1989), with Jaclyn Smith. A pair of 1988 appearances on “Family Ties” (NBC, 1982-89) preceded his first turn as a series regular on ABC’s ill-advised revival of “Dark Shadows” (1990). More television and TV features followed, including the short-lived Normal Lear political comedy series “The Powers That Be” (1992-93), before he was cast as the boyhood version of Craig Sheffer’s character in Robert Redford’s classic fly-fishing tale, “A River Runs Through It” (1992). More substantial roles soon followed, including the youthful Huttite husband betrothed to Patricia Arquette in Leonard Nimoy’s comedy “Holy Matrimony” (1994), and as a foster kid who calls on divine assistance for the Anaheim Angels in the treacle-heavy Disney film “Angels in the Outfield” (1994).
A turn as Demi Moore’s son in the lightweight crime thriller “The Juror” (1996) preceded his joining the cast of “3rd Rock,” an amusing comedy about a quartet of aliens who assume the bodies of average suburbanites in order to study human behavior. Gordon-Levitt’s character, Tommy Solomon, was previously the oldest and brightest member of the alien team, and suffered the indignities of inhabiting the body of a teenager enrolled in an average high school. For his performance, Gordon-Levitt was nominated three times for a Screen Actors Guild Award (for Outstanding Ensemble) and won two Young Star Awards in 1997 and 1998.
Following “3rd Rock’s” network finale in 2001, Gordon-Levitt bounced between independent projects and mainstream features. He co-starred as a young AIDS patient in the little-seen drama “Sweet Jane” (1998), turned up briefly as a teen victim in “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” (1998) and then appeared as Larisa Oleynik’s suitor in the teen comedy-romance “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999).
Aside from a vocal role in Disney’s disastrous animated film “Treasure Planet” (2002), Gordon-Levitt remained a fixture of challenging independent films since then. In 2001, he played a young man committed to a mental institution in the bleak “Manic,” as well as playing a Mormon elder in the lightweight gay drama “Latter Days” (2003). He earned critical praise as a street hustler with a horrific past in Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin,” which earned him the top acting award from the Seattle International Film Festival, and a nomination from the Gotham Awards.
Gordon-Levitt followed that success with the even more buzz-worthy, “Brick” (2005) – an inventive and well-received blend of film noir and high school drama in which he took on the stereotypical noir detective role, but as a young man trying to find his missing girlfriend. Following the critical success of “Brick,” he appeared in “Havoc,” a culture clash drama from documentarian Barbara Kopple which, unfortunately, garnered more press for star Anne Hathaway’s nude scenes than for any of the performances. His supporting turn in the overwrought pulp crime thriller “Shadowboxer” (2005) was largely unnoticed, as the film received a critical lambasting. He then landed the starring role in screenwriter Scott Frank’s directorial debut “The Lookout” (2007), playing a former high school hockey star mentally disabled by a car accident who outwits a group of criminals after a bank heist unravels into chaos.