Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Piven is an American actor whose three-decade career has been most-defined by his role as Hollywood agent Ari Gold on HBO's Entourage (2004–2011). He was born Jeremy Samuel Piven on July 26, 1965, in New York City and raised in Evanston, Illinois — outside Chicago — where his parents Byrne and Joyce Piven ran the Piven Theatre Workshop. He attended Drake University and the National Theatre Institute in Connecticut before pursuing acting professionally.

His film career through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s included substantial supporting work in major Hollywood productions: Lucas (1986), One Crazy Summer (1986), The Larry Sanders Show (recurring HBO role), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, opposite his lifelong friend John Cusack), Very Bad Things (1998), The Family Man (2000), Old School (2003), and The Kingdom (2007).

His role came in 2004 as Ari Gold — the volatile, profane, hyper-aggressive Hollywood talent agent — on HBO's insider-Hollywood drama Entourage. The show ran for eight seasons across 96 episodes and became one of the mid-2000s American TV depictions of Hollywood culture. Piven's Ari Gold won three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (2006, 2007, 2008) and the 2008 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor — Series, Miniseries or Television Film. The Ari Gold-and-Lloyd-Lee-the-assistant office dynamic became one of the most-iconic American workplace-comedy duos of the 2000s.

His post-Entourage career has been complicated by multiple sexual-harassment allegations from the late 2010s — accusations he has denied. He has continued to work selectively across film, TV, and stand-up comedy, including the 2014–2017 ITV/PBS period drama Mr Selfridge (where he played the American department-store founder Harry Gordon Selfridge). He has appeared on multiple American comedy podcasts in the 2020s. He continues to live primarily in Malibu, California.

His name Jeremy is the English form of the Hebrew Yirmeyahu meaning "Yahweh exalts," referring to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. Jeremy has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over half a century.