Steve Zahn

Steven James Zahn was born on November 13, 1967,^[2] in Marshall, Minnesota, the son of Carleton Edward Zahn, a Lutheran minister, and Zelda Clair Zahn, a bookstore clerk and later a YMCA administrator.^[3]

Zahn spent part of his childhood in Mankato, Minnesota, attending Kennedy Elementary School, and moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis for high school, where he acted in school plays and became a two-time Minnesota state speech champion.^[2][4] Zahn graduated from Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope in 1986, planning to eventually join the United States Marine Corps.^[2]

He attended Gustavus Adolphus College for one semester, but dropped out after seeing the original West End production of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.^[5] Zahn later enrolled in the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University, earning a Master of Fine Arts.^[6]

In 1991, Zahn made his professional stage debut in a Minnesota production of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues after falsely claiming to be a member of Actors' Equity.^[2] His fellow actors suggested that he study acting, inspiring him to enroll in American Repertory Theater's two-year training program.^[7] At A.R.T., Zahn worked with the stage director Andrei Șerban.^[8]

In 1991, Zahn formed the Malaparte theater company with a group of actor friends, including Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard.^[9] From 1991 to 1992, Zahn played Hugo Peabody in a national tour of Bye Bye Birdie starring Tommy Tune. He subsequently appeared in two Off-Broadway plays, Sophistry and Eric Bogosian's Suburbia.^[10]

After his breakout film role in 1994's Reality Bites, Zahn quickly gained a reputation for playing amiable stoners, slackers, and sidekicks in films such as That Thing You Do! (1996), You've Got Mail (1998), and Out of Sight (1998).^[11] In the 1990s, Zahn was often approached by fans who assumed he was an archetypal Generation X slacker, which was not the case. Zahn has said, "I'm the guy who gets up at six without an alarm clock. I was always that guy."^[5]

In 1999, Zahn landed his first starring role in the critically acclaimed indie film Happy, Texas, for which he won a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival.^[12] After that, he began playing darker, more nuanced characters. He received Oscar buzz for his role as Drew Barrymore's deadbeat ex in Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and played investigative journalist Adam Penenberg in Shattered Glass (2003), which starred Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, and Chloë Sevigny.^[13] A longtime Werner Herzog fan, Zahn campaigned for the role of Vietnam prisoner of war Duane W. Martin in Herzog's 2007 film Rescue Dawn; to prepare for the role, he lost 40 pounds (18 kg) by eating mostly raw food.^[11][7]

Zahn has also worked regularly in television, playing Davis McClary on 36 episodes of HBO's Treme.

From 2010 to 2012, Zahn portrayed Frank Heffley, the father of Greg Heffley, in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series.

In 2017, Zahn played Bad Ape in War for the Planet of the Apes. He researched the role by watching chimpanzee videos on YouTube, and later said that the motion capture process and lengthy digital takes made Bad Ape "the most challenging acting job I've ever had".^[14][15]

He played Jimmy Conroy, aka "Solo", in Season 2 of Silo (2024–25).^[16][17]

Zahn met author and theater artist Robyn Peterman, the daughter of clothier J. Peterman, while they were performing in a national tour of Bye Bye Birdie in 1991.^[3][7] They married in 1994 and have two children.^[18] In the 1990s, they bought a cabin in Pennsylvania and then a farm in New Jersey, near the Delaware Water Gap.^[19] They next moved to a 36-acre horse farm outside Lexington, Kentucky, where Zahn gardens and raises horses, goats, and sheep.^[20] He and his wife also run a local community theater, in which Zahn occasionally performs.^[5] He also has a lake cabin near Pine City, Minnesota,^[21] where he enjoys tubing and fishing with his children.^[22] Zahn is a Lutheran.^[23]

Zahn is a lifelong military history buff and has said that one of his biggest regrets was having turned down a role in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.^[24] In 2007, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Northern Kentucky University. A University of Kentucky sports fan, Zahn is often seen at games and events.^[25]