Jason Antoon

Broadway-to-Hollywood transplant Jason Antoon is no stranger to the hardships of show business. Raised in Pacific Palisades and Sherman Oaks, CA, he moved to Pittsburgh after graduating high school in order to study drama at Carnegie Mellon University. After earning his Bachelor's of Fine Arts in 1994, he relocated to New York City to begin his professional acting career. Unfortunately, paying gigs were few and far between and when Antoon did work it was most likely as a guest star or an understudy. He appeared in small roles on Fox's New York Undercover, ABC's Spin City, and NBC's Law & Order, as well as in the television film Path to Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing (1997). On-stage, he served as standby for the leads in Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile and the Roundabout Theater Company's Scapin. Antoon earned his breakout role in 2000, when Susan Stroman cast him as a principal performer in her innovative dance play, Contact. The Broadway production won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical and Antoon earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for his work. Many theater critics openly felt that he was unfairly shut out of the Tony nominations. When Antoon's contract ended in the winter of 2001, he left Contact to return to television and film. He appeared on the East Coast-based shows A&E's 100 Centre Street, NBC's Ed, and HBO's Sex and the City before leaving for Los Angeles. Antoon's career hit a snag when NBC did not pick up his sitcom pilot, "Count Me In," for its fall season and Paramount delayed his major feature-film debut, Phil Alden Robinson's The Sum of All Fears (2002), from its 2001 release. Antoon remained in Hollywood, even when asked by Contact director Stroman to audition for the part of Ali Hakim in the Broadway revival Oklahoma! His decision quickly paid off: The Sum of All Fears, which starred Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck, opened at number one in the box office in the spring of 2002. Barely a month later, Antoon delivered a scene-stealing performance as an eccentric cyber parlor owner opposite Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002). Well on his way to becoming a recognizable supporting actor, the actor went on to appear alongside Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice (2002).

~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide