Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen (born April 15, 1982, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian comic actor and screenwriter who won over audiences as a charismatic buffoon in a number of box-office hits, including Knocked Up (2007).

Rogen was born to liberal Jewish parents. At age 13 he began doing stand-up on the local comedy-club circuit alongside performers more than twice his age, and three years later he auditioned for the American high-school television dramedy Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), winning the role of the sardonic Ken. The series proved to be short-lived, but producer Judd Apatow was impressed by Rogen’s ease in front of the camera and talent for improvisation and in 2001 hired him as both an actor and a writer on a new college-themed sitcom, Undeclared. When that show met a similar fate, Rogen, along with childhood friend Evan Goldberg, landed jobs writing for the Sacha Baron Cohen showcase Da Ali G Show. Rogen also surfaced in an episode of the teen-centred drama Dawson’s Creek.

Meanwhile, Rogen’s association with Apatow remained fruitful, as he received bit parts in two of Apatow’s early film productions, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), stealing scenes in the latter from lead Steve Carell. Rogen put in another supporting performance in You, Me and Dupree (2006), but it was his next film that made him a household name. In Knocked Up, which Apatow wrote and directed, Rogen starred as an oafish pot-smoking slacker whose one-night stand with an attractive career woman (played by Katherine Heigl) inadvertently results in her pregnancy. The crude yet heartwarming movie grossed more than $200 million worldwide, and Rogen’s appealing performance established his A-list credentials.

Rogen had long desired to make his own movies, however, and finally got the chance with Superbad (2007), a raunchy comedy of teenage misadventures that he and Goldberg had originally scripted when they were teenagers themselves; Rogen served as executive producer and appeared briefly as a bumbling police officer. The writing duo returned the following year with Pineapple Express (2008), a marijuana-themed action farce starring Rogen opposite his Freaks and Geeks costar James Franco. At the same time, Rogen kept busy with a lead role in Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and a handful of animated features, which utilized his distinctive voice.

In 2009 Rogen portrayed a mall cop in the dark comedy Observe and Report and then starred with Adam Sandler in Funny People, another collaboration with Apatow, about a friendship that blossoms between two comedians. He later appeared as the title character in the superhero film The Green Hornet (2011)—which he and Goldberg adapted from the radio, TV, and comic book franchise of the same name—and provided the voice of a wisecracking extraterrestrial in the science-fiction spoof Paul (2011). Although Rogen was known primarily as a broad performer, his subtler charms registered in the seriocomic 50/50 (2011), in which he played the supportive best friend of a young man afflicted with spinal cancer, and Take This Waltz (2011), which centred on a love triangle.

Rogen starred as an inventor traveling with his mother (played by Barbra Streisand) in the road comedy The Guilt Trip (2012). With Goldberg he then cowrote and codirected This Is the End (2013), a zany take on the apocalypse in which he and an ensemble of other young actors (many of whom he had previously collaborated with) played exaggerated versions of themselves. Rogen played a young father who must contend with the difficulties of living next door to a fraternity house in the ribald Neighbors (2014). He reprised the role in a 2016 sequel, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.

Rogen cowrote and codirected The Interview, a provocative farce about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un; he and Franco costarred. The film, slated for release in December 2014, was pulled by its distributor, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., in the wake of a hack of the company’s computer system in November and terrorist threats later made by the hackers, who were thought to be acting on orders from North Korea. It was ultimately released on Christmas at a small number of independent theatres as well as on cable television and online streaming video platforms.

In Steve Jobs (2015), a biopic about the titular cofounder of Apple, Rogen portrayed Steve Wozniak. He returned to his comic wheelhouse in the amusement The Night Before (2015), about a group of friends gathering for one last Christmas Eve debauch. Rogen cowrote the animated comedy Sausage Party (2016), about a foulmouthed wiener, which he also voiced. The next year he reteamed with Franco in The Disaster Artist, which followed the filming of The Room (2003), a notoriously bad movie that became a cult favourite. He then appeared as the love interest of a woman (Kristen Bell) recently left at the altar in Like Father (2018), a comedy penned by his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen. His credits from 2019 included the romantic comedy Long Shot, in which he played an idealistic journalist who becomes a speechwriter for his childhood babysitter, now the U.S. secretary of state (Charlize Theron). Rogen also lent his voice to the character of Pumbaa in the 2019 remake of Disney’s The Lion King. In the comedy An American Pickle (2020), he was cast as a Jewish immigrant who falls into a vat at a pickle factory and is rescued 100 years later, perfectly preserved.

Rogen was also active away from the camera. With Goldberg and several others, he cofounded (2019) the cannabis company Houseplant, which was based in Canada. The business also sold ceramics designed by Rogen, who was a pottery maker. In 2021 he published Yearbook, a collection of humorous essays.