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K. Simmons, in full Jonathan Kimble Simmons - American character actor who had a wide-ranging and prolific career both before and after winning an Academy Award for his unnerving portrayal of the sadistic and perfectionist music instructor in Damien Chazelle’s drama Whiplash (2014).
Simmons was the son of a music teacher, and he studied music at the University of Montana (B.A., 1978). He became interested in theatre, however, and in the early 1980s he was a member of the Seattle Repertory Theatre, where he acted in such plays as The Fantasticks, Pal Joey, An Enemy of the People, and Guys and Dolls. He then moved to New York City, where he first appeared in the musical Birds of Paradise in 1987. Simmons performed on Broadway in A Change in the Heir (1990), Peter Pan (1991–92), Guys and Dolls (1992–95), and Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993–94). He began a lengthy career playing guest roles on television shows as well as small parts in films in the mid-1990s.
In 1999 Simmons appeared in both The Cider House Rules and Sam Raimi’s baseball movie For Love of the Game. He gained broad exposure with a recurring role between 1997 and 2004 as psychiatric expert Dr. Emil Skoda on the TV series Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He won praise for his portrayal of the vicious white supremacist Vern Schillinger in the prison-drama TV series Oz (1997–2003). Simmons played the newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021); the first three films were directed by Raimi. Simmons appeared in Jason Reitman’s satiric film Thank You for Smoking (2005), and he portrayed the father of the title character in Reitman’s Juno (2007).
