Jesse Plemons

Jesse Plemons (born April 2, 1988, Dallas, Texas, U.S.) is an American actor known for an understated, natural acting style that has made him popular with fans and critics alike. Plemons is typically cast in character roles, and his notable credits include the TV shows Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad, and Fargo and the movies The Irishman (2019) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

Family and early credits

Plemons is one of two children born to Lisa Beth (née Cason) Plemons and Jim Bob Plemons. The family lived in the small town of Mart, Texas, outside of Waco. Jesse Plemons was involved with acting from an early age. When he was just two years old, he appeared in a Coke commercial. Throughout his childhood he was occasionally cast as an extra when westerns were being filmed in the area. At about age 11 he began traveling with his parents to Los Angeles for auditions.

In 1998 Plemons appeared in his first credited role, playing a hobo in the screwball comedy Finding North. The following year he had a minor role in the sports drama Varsity Blues, and in 2000 he made his television debut in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. Numerous roles followed, mostly on TV. Plemons appeared in such shows as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, NCIS, and Grey’s Anatomy.

Breakthrough roles

At age 18 Plemons landed his first major role, as Landry Clark in Friday Night Lights—an NBC series about small-town high-school football in Texas. His character was the nerdy best friend and teammate of star quarterback Matt Saracen (played by Zach Gilford). The show debuted in 2006, and Landry quickly became a fan favorite. Plemons was allowed to improvise, and he later stated that it helped in his development as an actor. Friday Night Lights aired for five seasons before ending in 2011.

In 2012–13 Plemons appeared in a vastly different role, portraying meth cook Todd Alquist in Breaking Bad. In one scene, Alquist dispassionately kills a young boy who might have witnessed his criminal activities. Because of his resemblance to Matt Damon—Plemons played a younger version of the actor’s character in All the Pretty Horses (2000)—he was given the nickname “Meth Damon.” Another notable credit from the early 2010s was Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012), an acclaimed drama centering on a charismatic self-made guru (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

In 2015 Plemons had supporting roles in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, a Cold War thriller starring Tom Hanks, and in Black Mass, a biopic about gangster Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp). That year Plemons also appeared in season two of the black comedy anthology series Fargo. He and Kirsten Dunst starred as Ed and Peggy Blomquist, a married couple who attempt to cover up a fatal hit-and-run. Plemons’s portrayal of the loyal husband earned the actor his first Emmy Award nomination, and he later married Dunst (2022).

Plemons earned further acclaim for his work in the second season of Netflix’s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2017). In the episode “USS Callister,” he gave an Emmy-nominated performance as a computer coder. Also in 2017 he appeared in another Spielberg film, The Post, about The Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers. He later was the narrator of Adam McKay’s biopic Vice (2018), about Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), who served as vice president under U.S. Pres. George W. Bush. Plemons highlighted his comedic skills in Game Night (2018) with a scene-stealing portrayal of a lonely, divorced police officer.

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The Irishman, The Power of the Dog, and Killers of the Flower Moon

Plemons continued to attract the attention of film’s biggest directors, and in 2019 he appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a mob drama about the hit man (Robert De Niro) who allegedly killed union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Plemons portrayed Chuckie O’Brien, who some claim was involved in the murder. In 2020 Plemons landed the challenging leading-man role of Jake in Charlie Kaufman’s surreal film I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Kaufman told The New York Times that he had been impressed with Plemons’s understated performance in Breaking Bad: “I never saw Todd coming, and I think that’s the thing about Jesse. It’s very interesting to watch him work because everything is just so small and underplayed, which is very valuable in film.”

Plemons then portrayed an FBI agent in Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), an acclaimed drama about Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), leader of the Chicago Black Panthers. Plemons’s other notable credits from 2021 include Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. In the award-winning western, Plemons portrayed George Burbank, the brother of a cruel rancher (Benedict Cumberbatch). Their relationship grows increasingly fraught when George marries a single mother (Kirsten Dunst). For his performance, Plemons received an Academy Award nomination.

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In 2023 Plemons starred opposite Elizabeth Olsen in the HBO true-crime limited series Love & Death, about an affair that leads to murder. That same year he reunited with Scorsese and De Niro on Killers of the Flower Moon. The movie, which also starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, tells the true story of the Osage Nation murders in the 1920s, in which white interlopers tried to steal the tribal members’ oil wealth. Plemons was cast as dogged FBI agent Tom White.

Plemons later had a cameo in the dystopian Civil War (2024), which starred Dunst as a journalist covering a war-torn United States. His other credits from 2024 include Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, a dark comedy that explores cruelty, kindness, domination, and free will. Plemons, who played three characters, received the prize for best actor at the Cannes film festival.

Personal life

Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst began dating in 2016, about a year and a half after they completed filming Fargo. The couple became engaged in 2017 and subsequently had two sons. In 2022 Plemons and Dunst married.