Age: 71
male
Jonathan Kimble Simmons (born January 9, 1955) is an American actor. He has been cited as one of the greatest contemporary character actors, and has appeared in over 200 film and television roles since his debut in 1986. He is an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Critics Choice Award winner, among other accolades. His film roles include J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007), tobacco industry executive B.R. in Thank You for Smoking (2005), Mac MacGuff in Juno (2007), music instructor Terence Fletcher in Whiplash (2014), Bill in La La Land (2016), William Frawley in Being the Ricardos (2021), and Commissioner James Gordon in the DC Extended Universe films Justice League (2017), Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), and Batgirl (2022). He reprised his role as Jameson in various Marvel media unrelated to the Sam Raimi trilogy, including multiple animated series and the Marvel Cinematic Universe/Sony's Spider-Man Universe films Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Spider-Man: No Way Home (both 2021), and the web series TheDailyBugle.net (2019; 2021). On television, he is known for playing Dr. Emil Skoda on the NBC series Law & Order, white supremacist prisoner Vernon Schillinger on the HBO series Oz, and Assistant Police Chief Will Pope on TNT's The Closer. From 2017 to 2019, he starred as Howard Silk in the Starz series Counterpart. He has also appeared in a series of commercials for Farmers Insurance and starred in the third season of the IFC comedy series Brockmire. In 2020, he had recurring roles on the miniseries Defending Jacob and The Stand. As a voice artist, he is known for voicing Cave Johnson in the video game Portal 2 (2011), Tenzin in The Legend of Korra (2012–2014), Stanford “Ford” Pines in Gravity Falls (2015–2016), Kai in Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), Mayor Leodore Lionheart in Zootopia (2016), the titular character in Klaus (2019), Pig Baby in Season 4 of the HBO Max animated series Infinity Train (2021), and Nolan “Omni-Man” Grayson in the Amazon Prime action animated series Invincible (2021). He has been the voice of the Yellow M&M since 1996.
J.K. Simmons
Judge Harold Pryce
for Judge Harold Pryce in Scarlet, Texas
Suggested by mr95
Set in a small Texas town in 1963, at the precise hinge between the old world and the one that is about to be born, Scarlet, Texas follows Elena Cortez, 24, who returns from the University of Texas School of Law — one of the first Mexican-American women to graduate — to her hometown of Esperanza, population 2,400. She has the degree. She has the plan. She intends to open a practice and take civil rights cases in a town that has never had a Mexican-American lawyer and is not certain it wants one. She is also carrying a secret: a relationship with a woman, her law school roommate Josephine, that ended when Josephine's family intervened but that Elena has never stopped feeling. The film follows Elena across one summer — the summer the Civil Rights Act passes — as she establishes her practice, navigates the town's complicated landscape of welcome and rejection, falls unexpectedly and dangerously into connection with Marcus, a Black civil rights organizer passing through Esperanza on his way to larger battles, and confronts the limits of what 1963 Texas will allow any of its people to be. It is a film about legal courage, personal love, and the specific weight of being the first person in any room who looks like you.Act One — The Return Elena arrives in Esperanza with her degree. The town's reception — warm from some, cold from others, hostile from a few. She opens her practice in a rented room above a hardware store.Act Two — The Summer Her first cases. Marcus's arrival. The relationship that neither of them planned for. The Civil Rights Act's passage and what it means and doesn't mean in Esperanza, Texas.Act Three — The Precedent Elena's first major civil rights case in a hostile courthouse. The film ends not with victory or defeat but with Elena still standing — still practicing, still present — which in 1963 Esperanza is its own kind of triumph.
