Jasper Spivey (born Simon Jasper Spivey; February 2, 1987), is an American director, screenwriter, and actor. He became famous as a child actor for his performance as Cole Sear in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. In 2009, he made his directorial debut with Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, a jazz musical set in Boston. His sophomore effort Whiplash received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Early Life
Spivey was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child of Judith (née Epstein), a chef, and Marcus Spivey, a pianist and composer. When he was three years old, his parents divorced. After the split, he and his father moved to Los Angeles, California for his father's career. In an interview, he admitted Whiplash was a personal film for many reasons, and that, like his film's protagonist, "my mother left when I was a toddler, but I can only guess as to why she chose to leave."
Career
Spivey began his acting career at the age of five, where he first appeared in commercials and even on a Life cereal box before he found minor roles in television series. The first among them was a brief scene with Lauren Lane's C.C. Babcock in The Nanny, but it wasn't until 1997 that his career started to expand to include recurring roles. For six episodes he played the Anointed One in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, something for which he continues to apologize. When speaking about his brief stint on the supernatural drama, he joked, "I think I have spent my entire career trying to make up for how much I sucked as the annoying one."
In 1999, he became a household name with his role as Cole Sear, a child medium who could see dead people, in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. His performance earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, one of the youngest people to have that honor, and his follow up performances in You Can Count on Me as Rudy Prescott, opposite Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and in the Steven Spielberg directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence as the robotic child David bolstered his reputation. He earned particular acclaim for his work as David. When speaking about his performances as a child actor, Spivey said, "I was never going to be better than I was in A.I., so I'm not surprised my career stagnated after it" but that "people still stop me in the street to say 'I see dead people.'"
After a successful audition in 2002, Spivey signed on to the show Arrested Development as the earnest George Michael Bluth. While the show failed to find an audience during its original run, ultimately being canceled after three seasons, it received critical acclaim from critics. It would eventually gain a bigger recognition from the general public, and rumors swirled about a potential movie. The show's creator Mitchell Hurwitz instead broke the news that the show would be revived with a fourth season on Netflix. His initial time on the show seemed to reignite his interest in films, and he took on the roles of Dwayne, a teenager who had taken a vow of silence, in the highly praised Little Miss Sunshine, which reunited him with his former movie mom Toni Collette, and Paulie Bleeker in Juno. He has often credited the film's writer Diablo Cody in helping him realize he wanted to become a writer and director.
After Juno, Spivey retired from acting, only continuing with Arrested Development when the show returned for its revived fourth season. His directorial debut Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench was "something of an accident, it was supposed to be part of my portfolio for Tisch, but it took on a life of its own and I was curious how it would do." Knowing he had a lot to learn, he took a step back and applied to university like he originally intended and was accepted into the graduate filmmaking program. After graduation, he became a writer for hire while he worked on his own scripts he could direct. Known for being a private person, he said that the idea of directing Whiplash made him anxious as "it's a very personal film, I put more of myself in there than I'm comfortable admitting." The finished script was part of the Black List in 2012, and it was turned into a short film starring his former Juno costar J. K. Simmons as Fletcher.
Whiplash was met with positive acclaim, netting both the grand jury and audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to receive five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning three of the categories it was nominated for. Spivey is currently filming his next movie, another musical, that's set to be released in 2016.
Personal Life
In 2005, he enrolled in UCLA where he initially had difficulty picking a major, but eventually earned a degree in psychology. He then graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2013 with his MFA in Filmmaking.
In 1999, he became a household name with his role as Cole Sear, a child medium who could see dead people, in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. His performance earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, one of the youngest people to have that honor, and his follow up performances in You Can Count on Me as Rudy Prescott, opposite Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and in the Steven Spielberg directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence as the robotic child David bolstered his reputation. He earned particular acclaim for his work as David. When speaking about his performances as a child actor, Spivey said, "I was never going to be better than I was in A.I., so I'm not surprised my career stagnated after it" but that "people still stop me in the street to say 'I see dead people.'"
After a successful audition in 2002, Spivey signed on to the show Arrested Development as the earnest George Michael Bluth. While the show failed to find an audience during its original run, ultimately being canceled after three seasons, it received critical acclaim from critics. It would eventually gain a bigger recognition from the general public, and rumors swirled about a potential movie. The show's creator Mitchell Hurwitz instead broke the news that the show would be revived with a fourth season on Netflix. His initial time on the show seemed to reignite his interest in films, and he took on the roles of Dwayne, a teenager who had taken a vow of silence, in the highly praised Little Miss Sunshine, which reunited him with his former movie mom Toni Collette, and Paulie Bleeker in Juno. He has often credited the film's writer Diablo Cody in helping him realize he wanted to become a writer and director.
After Juno, Spivey retired from acting, only continuing with Arrested Development when the show returned for its revived fourth season. His directorial debut Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench was "something of an accident, it was supposed to be part of my portfolio for Tisch, but it took on a life of its own and I was curious how it would do." Knowing he had a lot to learn, he took a step back and applied to university like he originally intended and was accepted into the graduate filmmaking program. After graduation, he became a writer for hire while he worked on his own scripts he could direct. Known for being a private person, he said that the idea of directing Whiplash made him anxious as "it's a very personal film, I put more of myself in there than I'm comfortable admitting." The finished script was part of the Black List in 2012, and it was turned into a short film starring his former Juno costar J. K. Simmons as Fletcher.
Whiplash was met with positive acclaim, netting both the grand jury and audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to receive five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning three of the categories it was nominated for. Spivey is currently filming his next movie, another musical, that's set to be released in 2016.
