Jon Heder

Jonathan Joseph Heder was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 26, 1977,[1] the son of Helen (née Brammer) and physician James Heder. He has an identical twin brother named Dan,[2] as well as an older sister named Rachel, an older brother named Doug, and two younger brothers named Adam and Matt. He is of Swedish descent,[3] and is a nephew by marriage of former NFL player Vai Sikahema.[4] When he was about two years old, he and his parents moved to Salem, Oregon.[5] He attended Walker Middle School in Salem and graduated from South Salem High School in 1996,[5] where he was a member of the swim team and drama club. He was also an Eagle Scout,[6][7] and would later serve as a Scoutmaster for the organization in 2010.[7]

A 2002 alumnus of Brigham Young University, Heder worked on the short animated film Pet Shop, which earned a non-traditional animation student Emmy in 2005. After his acting career took off, he did not return to complete the work he had started on the short, though his name still appears in the credits. While attending BYU, he befriended Jared Hess and starred in Hess' short film Peluca, which was later expanded into Napoleon Dynamite. The short film received rave reviews on the BYU campus after screenings at a few colleges and local film festivals and competitions.

Napoleon Dynamite, filmed in Preston, Idaho, earned $44.5 million at the box office.[8] In June 2005, Heder received the MTV Movie Award for Best Musical Performance and Breakthrough Male Performance for the role. On October 8, 2005, he hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Ashlee Simpson. After his success with Napoleon Dynamite, Heder and his film co-star Efren Ramirez filmed a series of commercials to promote the 2015 Utah State Fair. They reprised their roles in a self-parody sketch called "Napoleon Bonamite" on the animated series Robot Chicken.

In 2005, Heder had a supporting role as a clerk in a new age bookstore in the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven. In 2006, he appeared in the comedy film The Sasquatch Gang, and had a starring role with Rob Schneider and David Spade in producer Adam Sandler's The Benchwarmers (2006), another comedy, about three men making up for lost chances by creating their own Little League baseball team. Also in 2006, he was the voice of the character Skull in the animated film Monster House, and starred in the comedy School for Scoundrels, opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Jacinda Barrett. With the exception of the Academy Award-nominee Monster House, Heder's post-Dynamite movies were widely panned and he risked becoming a one-hit wonder until he co-starred in 2007 with Will Ferrell in the well-received Blades of Glory (2007). Like many of Heder's films, Blades of Glory is an absurd, slapstick caricature, in this case revolving around rival male figure skaters who must team up in a pairs competition.

Heder's second turn at voice acting came in 2007 when he voiced the character of Chicken Joe, a surfing chicken, in the animated film Surf's Up. His first foray into web television was in the 2008 web series Woke Up Dead starring and produced by himself.[9] Woke Up Dead is a web-based, live-action sci-fi comedy thriller about Drex, a twenty-something USC student who wakes up underwater in the bathtub one morning and suspects that he might be dead.

Heder and his twin brother, Dan, star together as villains in the fourth installment of the popular internet martial arts comedy series Sockbaby. Heder's performance in When in Rome was praised by New York Times critic A. O. Scott: "Jon Heder as a goofy street magician is the funniest of the bunch."[10] In 2012, Heder returned to the role that made him famous by supplying the voice of Napoleon Dynamite in the Fox Network animated series, Napoleon Dynamite, which debuted in January 2012. In 2013, Heder appeared in the music video for "On Top of the World" with numerous other Utah-based actors and musicians, and in 2014 he appeared in the music video for the Chromeo song "Old 45s".[11]

In January 2017, Heder reprised his role as Chicken Joe in Surf's Up 2: WaveMania, the direct-to video sequel to Surf's Up.

Heder has been married to Kirsten Bales since 2002, having met her while they were both studying at Brigham Young University. They are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and live with their four children in the Saugus neighborhood of Santa Clarita, California.[12]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jon Heder.

• Jon Heder on Twitter
• Jon Heder at IMDb
• One of Jon Heders first projects
• Snopes article debunking the myth of his death
• Video and transcript of an interview with Heder
• Jon Heder on The Hour