Jason Alexander is an American actor, comedian, film director, and television host who was born Jay Scott Greenspan on September 23, 1959. He is best known for his portrayal of George Costanza in the television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), for which he received seven consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations and four Golden Globe nominations. Phillip Stuckey in the film Pretty Woman (1990), comic relief Hugo gargoyle in the Disney animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and the main character in the cartoon series Duckman (1994–1997) are among his other notable appearances.
He’s also appeared as a guest star on episodes including Dream On (1994), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2001, 2009), and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2001, 2009). He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his participation in Dream On. For “The Bad Guys?” on Brainwashed By Toons, he earned the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song in 2020.
He has acted in several Broadway musicals, notably Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical in 1989. In the Los Angeles production of The Producers, he made an appearance. He directed several musicals as the artistic director of “Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Los Angeles.”
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Table of Contents
Early Life
Jason Alexander is a 1977 Livingston High School graduate who grew up in Maplewood and Livingston, New Jersey. He had been interested in magic since he was a child and had hoped to become a magician but was advised that his hands were too tiny for card magic when attending a magic camp. He developed an interest in theater and soon realized, “Wait a minute..the whole thing’s an illusion. Nothing up there is real,” says the narrator, and the theater is a “magic trick.” “.. After that, he chose to pursue a career in theater.
He went to Boston University to study theatre after high school. He wanted to pursue classical acting, but after noticing his physique, a professor steered him toward humor, saying, “I know your heart and soul are Hamlet, but you will never play Hamlet.” He dropped out of Boston University in his third year to pursue a full-time acting career in New York City. In 1995, he received an honorary doctorate from the institution.
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His Career
Stage Career
Jason Alexander is a talented singer and dancer who began his performing career on the New York stage. He won the 1989 Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his performances in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, Kander & Ebb’s The Rink, Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound, Accomplice, and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. In 2003, he was cast opposite Martin Short in Mel Brooks’s The Producers in a Los Angeles production. He also played Jacob Marley in the 2004 musical adaption of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, alongside Kelsey Grammer.
He still performs in live concerts, including Barbra Streisand’s legendary birthday party for Sondheim at the Hollywood Bowl, where he and Angela Lansbury played scenes from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He was the artistic director of Reprise Theatre Company in Los Angeles, where he directed Sunday in the Park with George and Damn Yankees in 2007. He took over as the lead in Larry David’s Broadway play Fish in the Dark in 2015, replacing David. He also appeared in the world premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s The Portuguese Kid at the Manhattan Theatre Club in September 2017, alongside Sherie Rene Scott.
Television
Jason Alexander is most known for playing the clumsy George Costanza (Jerry Seinfeld’s character’s best friend since boyhood) on the award-winning television sitcom Seinfeld. For the part, he was nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards, although he did not win any of them, owing to his co-star Michael Richards’ triumph for his portrayal of Cosmo Kramer. He did, however, receive the 1995 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Male Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance.
Jason Alexander made cameos as himself in the second season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and with his three main Seinfeld co-stars in the seventh season. He played Al “Sexual” Harris (a frequent perpetrator of sexual harassment) in the ABC sitcom Dinosaurs, among other roles. Despite a great film and stage career, Alexander was never able to replicate his Seinfeld success on television. The lavishly advertised but short-lived ABC sitcom Bob Patterson, which was canceled after five episodes, marked his first post-Seinfeld comeback to prime-time television in 2001. He attributes the show’s failure in part to the country’s mood following 9/11.
Jason Alexander guest-starred as Professor Rothschild, a well-educated serial murderer obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence who throws the team into a race against time to save his last victims, in the season four episode “Masterpiece” of the CBS show Criminal Minds in 2008.
In the same season, he directed the episode “Conflicted,” which starred Jackson Rathbone. Alexander appeared as a high school teacher bringing a wrongful dismissal action in an episode of Harry’s Law in 2011.
Jason Alexander portrayed Olix the bartender in The Orville in 2018. In the same year, he appeared in two episodes of Young Sheldon as Gene Lundy, a theatrical teacher. In one episode in 2021, he resumed his role as Gene Lundy. In 2019, Alexander starred as Asher Friedman, a blacklisted Broadway playwright and an old friend of Midge Maisel’s father Abe Weissman, in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Films
Jason Alexander has also appeared in Love! Valour! Compassion!, Dunston Checks In, Love and Action in Chicago, The Last Supper, and Jacob’s Ladder, in addition to his performances as an insensitive, money-hungry lawyer in Pretty Woman and as clumsy womanizer Mauricio in Shallow Hal. In Disney’s 1996 animated picture The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, he voiced the Hugp gargoyle. House of Mouse and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance are two of his other Disney voice roles.
Beginning with 1996’s For Better or Worse and 1999’s Just Looking, he dabbled in directing. In the 2002 film The Man Who Saved Christmas, he played toymaker A.C. Gilbert. He appeared as a train station manager in the 2009 film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale. In A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, he played Cosmo.
In The Return of Jafar, the TV series based on the 1992 film Aladdin, he voiced the character Abis Mal. In 2009, he portrayed Joseph in The Word of Promise, a Thomas Nelson audio Bible production. Jim Caviezel, Lou Gossett Jr., John Rhys-Davies, Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Christopher McDonald, Marisa Tomei, and John Schneider were among the cast members of the film.
StandUp And Host
On May 29, 2008, Jason Alexander presented the LOL Sudbury opening night gala in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, which was simulcast in 60 Cineplex theaters across Canada, a first for any comedy festival. He has appeared in multiple episodes of the Twilight Zone Radio Dramas as a voice actor.
Alexander starred in Jason Alexander’s Comedy Spectacular, a show that was only performed in Australia in 2008 and 2009. Alexander’s musical talent is included in the presentation, which includes stand-up and improvisation. Several well-known Australian comedians support him.
Jason Alexander’s Comedy Christmas, which he performed for the first time in 2006, was his debut show of this type. Alexander was featured in The Donny Clay Experience at the Planet Hollywood Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, in February/March 2010. Donny Clay, who he has played on a tour of the United States and Orillia, Ontario, is a self-help guru in the same vein as his Bob Patterson character. He presented the Saturday Night Seder in 2020, an online Passover Seder that featured many celebrities and raised money for the CDC Foundation.
Commercials
During the 1980s, Jason Alexander appeared in some ads. Hershey’s Kiss, Delta Gold potato chips, Miller Lite beer, McDonald’s McDLT hamburger, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Levi’s 501 jeans, Sony Watchman TV, and Western Union wire transfer were among the advertisements. He did a commercial for Rold Gold pretzels that aired during the Super Bowl in January 1995. In the advertisement, he and his Frasier dog Eddie jump out of an airplane over the stadium using a parachute. Following the commercial, the audience is returned to a presumably live feed of the playing field, where they can hear surprised sports commentators as Alexander and the dog land to wild acclaim.
In 2002, he participated in two Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) commercials, one with San Francisco Giants Barry Bonds and the other with The Bachelorette’s Trista Rehn. It was claimed that he stopped making these advertisements because of suspected animal abuse by KFC suppliers and slaughterhouses, but he disputed this on August 2, 2006.
Jason Alexander starred in a cable TV commercial for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 2007. Alexander was one of the numerous celebrities who reprised their roles as Colonel Sanders in KFC ads in 2018, recreating his role from the 2002 campaign.
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Net Worth
Jason Alexander has a net worth of $50 million as an American actor, comedian, director, producer, singer, and writer. Jason is well-recognized for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld. Alexander starred in a CBS sitcom called Everything’s Relative in 1987 before joining Seinfeld for a nine-year run.
