Jeremy Strong

An Obsession with Detail

Jeremy Strong was born in Boston in 1978. His childhood had nothing to do with Hollywood glamour or the intellectual circles of New York. His father worked in juvenile justice, and his mother was a hospice nurse.

At Yale he studied English literature. But his real education happened on film sets, where he worked as an assistant. In 1993 he spent weeks observing Daniel Day-Lewis while they filmed The Age of Innocence. That experience shaped his understanding of the craft.

Nobody handed him anything.

He spent nearly fifteen years taking tiny roles in film and in New York theater. In 2008 he appeared in The Happening, and in 2012 he had a brief appearance in Lincoln. He worked constantly, but his name didn't appear on the posters for the main productions.

During that time he lived in shared apartments and kept a spartan work ethic. He prepared for every audition as if it were his last. So when the chance to work in television finally came, he was already a veteran actor who had worked in the shadows.

The Weight of Kendall Roy

In 2016, Strong first auditioned for the role of Roman Roy in a new HBO series. The casting team saw something different in him. They decided his intensity fit the character of Kendall better, the troubled son who seeks the approval of a tyrannical father.

The premiere of Succession in 2018 radically changed his standing in the industry. His performance was not based on imitating Wall Street millionaires. He sought out the real pain behind privilege and the inheritance they received.

And the gamble paid off.

His working method sparked intense debate among his castmates. Strong prefers not to rehearse scenes so that surprise and conflict stay alive in front of the camera. In 2021, a profile in The New Yorker revealed that the actor takes his work with a seriousness many consider extreme.

Isolation is his tool.

He doesn't use conventional acting techniques. For him, there is no distinction between the character and the person while filming is underway (a process that often leaves him physically exhausted). In 2020, he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his work in the show's second season.

Beyond Television

After the series ended in 2023, the actor sought out projects that would take him away from the corporate world. He has always been terrified of repeating himself. In 2024 he played lawyer Roy Cohn in the film The Apprentice alongside Sebastian Stan.

For this project he spent months studying audio recordings and old interviews with Cohn. He wanted to capture that fixed stare and the lack of blinking that defined the lawyer. But he didn't want a caricature; he wanted to understand the mechanics of power in the 1970s.

In 2024 he also returned to the Broadway stage in a new production of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen. The production stripped away much of the traditional set design to focus on the words and the moral conflict. For Strong, theater remains the place where an actor cannot hide behind editing.

The play was staged at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York. During the 2024 performances, the production took in more than one million dollars a week at the box office, and Strong received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.