On this date in 1969, actor and musician Thomas Jacob “Jack” Black was born in Santa Monica, Calif., to Judith Love Cohen and Thomas Black, both aerospace engineers. His mother is of Jewish ancestry and his formerly Presbyterian father had converted to Judaism to marry her.
Black had a Jewish upbringing that included a bar mitzvah. “It was a celebration because I no longer had to go to Hebrew school, which is additional school,” he joked on the H3 Podcast hosted by Ethan Klein. “I got my bar mitzvah and then I bailed on the whole enterprise.” (The Jewish Chronicle, Aug. 8, 2023) “[W]hen I was a kid, I remember hearing that a bar mitzvah was like your birthday times 10. And it was not like that at all. I got socks. So I turned to atheism.” (The Guardian, April 18, 2013)
His parents divorced when he was 10 and he lived primarily with his father while frequently visiting his mother. Her engineering work on the abort-guidance system had been integral to the harrowing but safe return of Apollo 13 from the moon to Earth in 1970. He struggled in high school due to drugs and his unsettled home life but graduated from a private alternative school and enrolled in the University of California in Los Angeles, where he joined a theater troupe.
He started landing small roles on prime time TV, including “Life Goes On,” “Northern Exposure,” “Mr. Show,” “Picket Fences” and “The X-Files.” Minor roles in movies such as “Waterworld,” “The Cable Guy,” “Mars Attacks!” and “Dead Man Walking” followed. His breakout roles were in “High Fidelity” (2000) and “School of Rock” (2003), with the latter earning him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.
In “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004), he played a manic motorcyclist who punts Will Ferrell’s dog off a bridge. Before long, it was almost a matter of what movie didn’t the stocky, 5-foot-6 Black have a role in as an actor or as a musician in the “mock rock” duo Tenacious D with guitarist Kyle Gass. Tenacious D signed with Epic Records in 2000. According to IMDb as of 2025, Black has 357 credits as an actor and 876 as himself, along with about 100 more in various other capacities. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.
In 2006 he eloped and married Tanya Haden, a cellist who was a triplet with two sisters. They have two sons, Samuel (b. 2006) and Thomas (b. 2008). Tanya’s father was jazz bassist and band leader Charlie Haden, an original member of the Ornette Coleman Quartet.
Black, who was 36 when Samuel was born, once told talk show host Conan O’Brien about enrolling his children in Hebrew school for a while. “I feel a little hypocritical ’cause I’m an atheist, you know, but it’s a really good school, and I am a Jew technically, I’m allowed to take my kids there. And my wife is, too, but also we have not been to synagogue for years.” (“Conan” on TBS, April 28, 2012)
Black garnered a second Golden Globe nomination in 2011 in the category Best Actor in a Comedy for his starring role in the black comedy “Bernie,” but there were also bombs along the way such as Worst Actor Golden Raspberries for “Borderlands” and “Dear Santa” in 2024.
Successes were much more common. He played a fictional version in 2015 of author R.L. Stine in “Goosebumps” and its 2018 sequel. He repeated the sequel success with “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” (2017) and “Jumanji: The Next Level” (2019). Most recently he had a starring role in “A Minecraft Movie,” which brought in the second-highest gross at the box office early in 2025 and the second-highest video game film of all time.
Black launched his YouTube channel “Jablinski Games” in 2018 and within a week it had over 1 million subscribers. He created it as a way to further bond with his sons. He took part in July 2019 in a “Minecraft” stream to raise money for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the wake of the drowning suicide of Desmond Daniel Amofah, known online as Etika. After two days of streaming, they raised $30,479. As of June 2023, Jablinski Games had 5.04 million subscribers.
PHOTO: Black in Los Angeles in 2011; photo © Glenn Francis, PacificProDigital.com under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.
