Jon Heder

Adding more color to American entertainment industry with his terrific comedic skills also memorable screen presence, Jon Heder could as well be one hot commodity worth to watch for in the genre. One of six children in his family, the funnyman was born Jonathan Joseph Heder on October 26, 1977 in Fort Collins, Colorado and spent most of his early life in Salem, Oregon where he attended South Salem High School before headed for Provo, Utah to enroll in Brigham Young University following his 1996 graduation from the institution. Accompanied by his identical twin brother, Daniel, he initially took film program as his major there, but later decided to switch his study to computer animation, through which he finally could earn his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2003. Though so, his bond with the former field apparently still took its toll in his life as the guy afterwards found himself back to acting thing when he was asked by close friend Jared Hess to play in his short film effort of "Peluca" (2003) which then was brought to Slamdance Film Festival in the same year.

Beyond the twosome's expectation, the audience's response upon seeing "Peluca" at the festival was so overwhelming that both of them thus fixed their mind to once again join forces to adapt the work into the feature-length version not long after. Entitled "Napoleon Dynamite", this too wonderfully encountered huge appreciation when being screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, even evoked a bidding war between Fox Searchlight and Warner Independent Pictures over distribution rights before the former company finally managed to obtain the privilege. A quirky, well-made comedic picture, the movie delightfully proved to be a fantastic asset of Fox as it quickly soared to collect total domestic gross of over 44 million U.S. dollar following its theatrical release later that year, an undoubtedly fabulous amount for an indie production to score. Such superb result inevitably gave grand impact to Jon's career in turn, propelling the blue-eyed young man right away to widespread attention which really elevated him from obscurity.

Much to his surprise, the sweet taste of success gained from "Napoleon Dynamite" still continued in the following year when he gloriously won two MTV Movie Awards in the categories of Breakthrough Male and Best Musical Performance besides taking home 2 out of 9 Teen Choice Award nods for those of Choice Movie Dance Scene and Hissy Fit at its seventh annual ceremony. With this accomplishment, the next step therefore was rather velvety enough for Jon to undergo since he then was seen in two smash box-office hit movies of "Just Like Heaven" (2005) plus "The Benchwarmers" (2006), which both satisfyingly managed to garner more than $48 million in U.S. only. Undeniably shining brightly thereafter, the glory is likely to keep flowing through ahead for the actor as a handful of high-profile projects, like "School for Scoundrels" (2006), "Mama's Boy" (2006), "Moving McAllister" (2007), and "Blades of Glory" (2007), have already been added smoothly to his growing film resume.

On November 23, 2002 Jon married Kirsten, whom he met at Brigham Young University. In May 2007, the couple proudly welcomed the arrival of their first child, a baby girl whom they named Evan Jane Heder.