J.K. Simmons

J.K. Simmons (born Jonathan Kimble Simmons on January 9, 1955, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan) is an American actor with more than 200 film and television credits spanning over three decades. He studied music at the University of Montana before turning to theatre, performing with the Seattle Repertory Theatre in the early 1980s and appearing on Broadway in productions including the 1991 revival of Peter Pan and the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls.

In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Simmons portrayed Ivo Shandor, the Shandor Mining Company founder and architect of the Temple of Gozer. Because Simmons was available on set for only one to two days while filming of the coffin scenes ran ten days, special make-up designer Arjen Tuiten's team produced a full silicone replica of Simmons, complete with an internal armature to preserve weight and positioning. A second dummy was created specifically for the sequence in which Gozer tears Shandor apart; that reset took approximately four minutes per take. Simmons was on set to watch his puppet being used.

Simmons first reached wide audiences as J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007), a role he has continued in Marvel Cinematic Universe productions. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the ferocious music instructor Terence Fletcher in Whiplash (2014). Other notable credits include Vernon Schillinger in HBO's Oz (1997-2003), Mac McGuff in Juno (2007), Sebastian in La La Land (2016), and the voice of Omni-Man in the animated series Invincible (2021 to present).