Rise to Fame
Cast as the bad boy burnout in Freaks and Geeks in 1999, he was exactly the kind of actor the show needed and Hollywood couldn't figure out what to do with after it got cancelled. Spider-Man solved that in 2002 by making him globally famous. His real calling card was 127 Hours (2010), where he played Aron Ralston surviving alone in a canyon for five days, earning Oscar, BAFTA, and SAG nominations. The Disaster Artist confirmed the pattern: take on the unhinged outsider nobody else wants, and usually win something for it.
In the Spotlight
Winning a Golden Globe for The Disaster Artist in January 2018 while wearing a Time's Up pin turned out to be spectacularly bad timing. Days later, five women went on record in the LA Times about behavior at his acting school, Studio 4. The civil lawsuit that followed settled in 2021 for $2.23 million. He admitted to sleeping with students, called it consensual despite the power imbalance, and cited sex addiction. An Oscar nomination the industry expected never materialized. His last major Hollywood film was 2019. He's rebuilding through European co-productions, slowly, on other people's terms.
Side Notes
While most actors were chasing sequels, he was simultaneously enrolled in graduate programs at Columbia, NYU, and Brooklyn College, eventually adding a Yale PhD to the list. The ambition had a performative streak: the General Hospital character he played got a fictional art show that ran simultaneously with his own real exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. In late 2024, he opened a 28-piece assemblage show in Zurich, making his return to the art world while Hollywood kept him at arm's length.