Jeremy Sisto - Film & Theater Personalities, Birthday and Childhood

Born on October 6, 1974, in Grass Valley, California, Jeremy Merton Sisto is the youngest child and only son of Reedy Gibbs and Richard “Dick” Sisto. Gibbs was an actress while Sisto was a jazz musician and educator. Besides Jeremy, they also have a daughter, actress Meadow Sisto.

Jeremy was four years old when his parents divorced and his father subsequently remarried, this time to fabric artist Penny Sisto. He was raised by his mother, at first in the lower Sierra Nevada Mountains, and from age seven onwards, in Chicago, Illinois.

He studied at Hayfield Montessori School in Louisville, Kentucky before attending Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. He later enrolled at and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Jeremy Sisto was still a student when he began to develop a serious interest in acting. He performed for the local theatre companies Cherry Street Theater and the Absolute Theater Company and went on to work in his debut film, ‘Grand Canyon’ (1991).

After completing his education, he decided to pursue acting full-time. He starred in the 1992 television film ‘Desperate Choices: To Save My Child’ alongside Reese Witherspoon, and also in the 1994 TV remake of ‘The Shaggy Dog’ (1959). In the early years of his career, he was able to demonstrate his ability and talent by taking on a wide range of characters.

Besides playing the wealthy, arrogant teen Elton Tiscia in ‘Clueless’ (1995), he acted opposite Viggo Mortensen in ‘The Crew’ (1994), Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Moonlight and Valentino (1995), Jeff Bridges in ‘White Squall’ (1996), Luke Wilson in ‘Bongwater’ (1998), and Giovanni Ribisi in ‘Some Girl’ (1998).

He portrayed the demon Vassago in ‘Hideaway’ (1995), a medical student turned kidnapper in ‘Suicide Kings’ (1997), Republican politician Frederick W. Seward in ‘The Day Lincoln Was Shot’ (1998), and Olympic gold medallist Frank Shorter in ‘Without Limits’.

His first leading role in a major project came about in 1999 in ‘Jesus’. With an estimated budget of $20 million, the film had a stellar cast of Jacqueline Bisset as Mary, mother of Jesus, Armin Mueller-Stahl as Joseph the carpenter, Debra Messing as Mary Magdalene, and Gary Oldman as Pontius Pilate.

He played a widowed filmmaker in the Moxie-Award-winning film ‘This Space Between Us’ (2000). In 2003, he was cast as the titular character in the miniseries ‘Julius Caesar’. The project also had veteran actors Richard Harris as Lucius Sulla and Christopher Walken as Cato the Younger.

He then got the opportunity to work on stage in Richard Greenberg's play ‘Take Me Out’ as the bigoted Southerner Shane Mungitt. He returned to the stage in 2006 for a Broadway production of ‘Festen’ at the Music Box Theatre, portraying the character, Michael Klingenfelt.

In 2001, he co-starred with his sister Meadow in the low-budget black and white indie film ‘Don’s Plum’. His next important film was the psychological horror ‘May’ (2002). In the romantic-comedy ‘Now You Know (2002), he played a man whose fiancée wants to call off their wedding. He was part of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Thirteen’ (2003) as one of movie’s supporting characters, Brady. In another 2003 addition to his filmography, ‘The Movie Hero’, he played the protagonist Blake Gardner.

Sisto turned producer for the cyberpunk science-fiction film ‘Paranoia 1.0’ (2004). In 2006, he was hired for the role of former FBI operative Lucian Knapp in NBC’s short-lived crime drama ‘Kidnapped’.

He provided the voice-over for the Bruce Wayne / Batman direct-to-video animated film ‘Justice League: The New Frontier’ in 2008. In 2009, he collaborated with Kristin Chenoweth in the independent drama ‘Into Temptation’. In Emily Kapnek’s situational comedy ‘Suburgatory’, he played a single father who relocates with his daughter (Jane Levy) to the suburbs. The show was cancelled after three seasons.

Since 2016, he has been starring in Audience Network’s ‘Ice’, a show about a family involved in the diamond trade. He is set to appear as Sgt. Robert Miltenberger in the upcoming war drama ‘The Long Road Home’.

Jeremy Sisto is best known for his role in Alan Ball’s ‘Six Feet Under,’ a black-comedy masterpiece that garnered widespread critical acclaim and regularly accumulated high ratings for HBO. Sisto’s Billy Chenowith was one of the main characters in the first season and a recurring one from season two onwards. Chenowith is an artist who is suffering from bipolar disorder and often tends to lose control over his own actions, resulting in violent, disruptive outbursts.

Sisto joined the cast of NBC’s police procedural and legal drama television series ‘Law & Order’ as Det. Cyrus "Lupes" Lupo in season 18, 19, and 20, replacing Milena Govich’s Nina Cassady as Jesse L. Martin's character Ed Green’s partner.

In 2002, Jeremy Sisto received the first award nomination of his career at the 2002 Screen Actors Guild Award for ‘Six Feet Under’.

In 2003, for ‘The Movie Hero’, he won the Jury Award for Best Actor – Feature Film and the Special Jury Maverick Acting Award at the Dahlonega International Film Festival and the Cinequest Film Festival respectively.

He was conferred with the Achievement Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2009 for ‘Into Temptation’.

When Jeremy Sisto was 18 years old, he married actress Marisa Ryan, who was of the same age, in Las Vegas. That marriage lasted only two days before they separated. But they remained legally married until 2002 when they finally divorced.

He began dating production assistant Addie Lane in February 2007. On June 5, 2009, their first child, a daughter they named Charlie-Ballerina, was born. The couple married four months later, on October 13, at New York City Hall. Lane gave birth to their son, Bastian Kick, on March 9, 2012. The family currently resides in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

As an active member of the community, he is a diligent supporter of Hollygrove, a children’s charity initiative dedicated to serve abused and neglected children, and The Art of Elysium, which encourages working actors to support various children’s causes.

Sisto’s parents named him after Trappist philosopher Thomas Merton.

He and Kate Winslet auditioned together for the roles of Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater respectively for James Cameron’s epic romance-disaster film ‘Titanic’ (1997). However, the role eventually went to Leonardo DiCaprio.