Jeff Goldblum

• 1. Introduction

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  In July 2018, a statue of Jeff Goldblum stood 25 feet tall beside London's Tower Bridge. It was a temporary installation, built to mark 25 years since the release of Jurassic Park. Goldblum, born Jeffrey Lynn Goldblum on the 22nd of October 1952, is an American actor and musician. Few performers see a monument to themselves while still working. His films rank among the highest-grossing ever made. Yet his résumé also includes Broadway stages, a Sesame Street cave, hotel jazz rooms and a short film he directed that earned an Academy Award nomination. How did a doctor's son from a Pennsylvania suburb end up here? What does a childhood tragedy have to do with a piano? And why would a hotel in Singapore hang his photograph over a guest's bed?

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• 2. Pittsburgh Roots

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  West Homestead, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, is where Goldblum was born to Jewish parents. His mother, Shirley Jane Goldblum, whose maiden name was Temeles, worked as a radio broadcaster. She later ran a firm selling kitchen equipment and appliances. His father, Harold Leonard Goldblum, was a physician who served as a major in the U.S. Army during World War II. Harold went on to become chief of medicine at a Pittsburgh hospital. The family's ancestors came from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, with roots in Starobin, now in Belarus, and Zolochiv, now in Ukraine.

  Show business was a live interest in the household. Goldblum's father nearly studied acting before choosing medicine instead. Goldblum had a sister, Pamela, and two brothers. Rick, whom Goldblum has called a "kind of hero of mine", died in 1971 at the age of 23. He was travelling in Morocco when he contracted dysentery, which led to kidney failure. Goldblum credits Rick with sparking his love of jazz. He has said the loss made him "more focused" and gave him a drive to "save myself and survive". His other brother, Lee, was secretly gay and struggled with health problems before dying in 2000.

  At 17, Goldblum left for New York City with acting in mind. He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse under the acting coach Sanford Meisner.

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• 3. Small Parts, Big Rooms

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  Death Wish in 1974 gave Goldblum his first film credit, as a home-invading thug in a Charles Bronson picture. Before that, he had already reached Broadway. His debut came in Two Gentlemen of Verona, a musical that won a Tony Award. More small film parts followed in California Split in 1974 and Nashville in 1975. A 1975 Columbo episode, "A Case of Immunity", had him briefly playing a protester.

  In Annie Hall in 1977, he appears as a party guest speaking into a telephone. His one line has become a small piece of film trivia: "This is Mr. Davis. I forgot my mantra."

  Bigger attention arrived with Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978 and The Big Chill in 1983. In 1984, he took a lead in a television movie as the comedian Ernie Kovacs. The film dealt with the real kidnapping of Kovacs' two daughters by his first wife. Edie Adams, who was Kovacs' second wife and widow, made a cameo. Reviews of the movie were good.

  That same year came The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. Two years later, in 1986, The Fly made him a leading man.

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• 4. Franchise Faces

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  Dr. Ian Malcolm first appeared on screen in Jurassic Park in 1993. Goldblum returned to the part in The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997. Two decades later he came back again for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018 and Jurassic World Dominion in 2022. Those last two films left him tied with BD Wong for the most appearances by any cast member across the franchise.

  Independence Day arrived in 1996, with Goldblum playing David Levinson. Director Roland Emmerich's alien-invasion disaster film turned into another enormous hit. In 2016, Goldblum reprised the role in the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence.

  His next franchise change of pace came in Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. There he played the Grandmaster, a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He later voiced the same character in two episodes of the animated series What If...?

  In October 2022, reports said Goldblum was in final talks to play the Wizard in the two-part film adaptation of the musical Wicked. His casting was confirmed on the 8th of December 2022. He appears in Wicked in 2024 and Wicked: For Good in 2025, where he plays the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

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• 5. Beyond the Blockbusters

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  Wes Anderson has cast Goldblum repeatedly. The collaboration began with The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in 2004 and continued through The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014. It extended to the animated Isle of Dogs in 2018, in which he voices a dog named Duke, and Asteroid City in 2023.

  Independent cinema gave him quieter material. Deep Cover and Igby Goes Down in 2002 are among the smaller films he is known for. In Adam Resurrected in 2008, he played Adam, a former Jewish German entertainer. The film adapts a novel by Yoram Kaniuk. His character becomes the ringleader of a group of Holocaust survivors living in an asylum after World War II.

  Goldblum also taught. At Playhouse West in North Hollywood, he led acting classes alongside Robert Carnegie. With several actors from that company, he improvised and directed Little Surprises, a live-action short film. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film in 1996, the same year Independence Day opened.

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• 6. Small Screen, Strange Corners

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  A Sesame Street appearance in 1990 shows how Goldblum treats television. He played Minneapolis, Bob's long-lost brother, in an Indiana Jones parody. The sketch centered on "the golden cabbage of Snuffertiti", hidden in Mr. Snuffleupagus's cave.

  Television work ranged widely after that. He guested on Will & Grace, which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He also turned up on Friends, Portlandia and Inside Amy Schumer. On Law & Order: Criminal Intent, he replaced Chris Noth as a senior detective, Zack Nichols. In August 2010, media outlets reported that he was leaving because of persistent concerns about the show's future.

  His voice carried commercial weight too. For several years in the 1990s, he narrated most U.S. Apple commercials, including those for the iMac and iBook. He also voiced some U.S. Toyota spots and advertising for a Procter & Gamble facial cream line. In 2003, he filmed a commercial for the Irish National Lottery.

  The World According to Jeff Goldblum, a series he hosted, was announced at Disney's D23 Expo in 2019. It was available at the launch of Disney+ on the 12th of November 2019 and ran until 2022.

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• 7. Jazz at the Carlyle

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  By 2014, Goldblum's jazz band, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, was performing weekly at the Carlyle Hotel. The group had been a long-running side of his life. An accomplished jazz pianist, he had also helped found a New York theater company, The Fire Dept, announced in September 2006.

  On the 29th of May 2018, Billboard reported that Decca Records had signed him to make a studio album. The Capitol Studios Sessions, his debut with the orchestra, appeared on the 9th of November 2018. A year later came I Shouldn't Be Telling You This, after the band had played Glastonbury that summer. Plays Well with Others, the group's third release, followed on the 24th of March 2023.

  The records have kept coming. Still Blooming arrived on the 25th of April 2025 and Night Blooms on the 5th of June 2026, both on Decca.

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• 8. Home and Fandom

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  Patricia Gaul was Goldblum's first wife. They were married from 1980 to 1985 and appeared together in Silverado in 1985. From 1987 to 1991, he was married to Geena Davis, who co-starred with him in Transylvania 6-5000, The Fly and Earth Girls Are Easy.

  Since 2014, he has been married to Emilie Livingston, a Canadian Olympic rhythmic gymnast. They live in Hollywood Hills with their two sons, born in 2015 and 2017. In 2025, Goldblum said he had become a pescatarian, influenced by the themes of animal cruelty in Wicked.

  Fans have turned him into a running joke. In September 2016, a couple staying at The Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica jokingly asked for photos of Goldblum in their room. Staff decorated it with framed images from Jurassic Park and Independence Day. In February 2018, a couple at the Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel in Singapore made a similar request. That hotel answered with a "Jeff Goldblum Welcomes..." collage and photographs throughout the room.

  The attention eventually reached the page. Travis M. Andrews, a features writer at the Washington Post, wrote the 2021 biography Because He's Jeff Goldblum, published by Penguin Random House.

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