Jamie Kennedy

After high school, Kennedy moved to L.A., where he wanted to have a career as an extra. Unfortunately, Hollywood casting agents had other ideas, and the aspiring actor found himself working odd jobs ranging from a restaurant busboy to a gum-scraper at K-Mart. During this time, he also studied at the American/British Drama Academy and began finding stand-up work at various improv clubs. It was in one of these clubs that he caught the attention of an independent filmmaker and was subsequently cast in the little-seen The Legend of Flin Flon.

The actor's bona fide entry into the film industry came with a supporting role in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, in which he played a fuchsia-haired thug. That same year he had a huge breakthrough in Wes Craven's Scream, which cast him as a video store clerk with an unnerving lust for horror movies. The great success of the film opened a number of doors for Kennedy, one of which led to a memorable role as an office boy in Jill Sprecher's well-received independent comedy Clockwatchers (1997), which also starred Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey, and Toni Collette. The actor also reprised his role for the inevitable Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000) and appeared in such slacker extravaganzas as Bongwater and Starf*cker (both 1998).

Kennedy got a shot at more grown-up fare with a supporting role in David O. Russell's acclaimed Gulf War drama Three Kings (1999), and a turn as a movie studio gofer in the satirical Bowfinger (1999). His growing popularity was reflected in the number of projects he was involved with in 2000; included amongst them were Ben Younger's The Boiler Room, in which Kennedy played an ambitious young stock broker, and The Specials, an ensemble comedy that cast him as a member of a motley group of superheroes. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide