TJ Miller is an American actor and stand-up comedian, famous for his roles in the films “Monstro”, “Deadpool” and its sequel, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster “Ready Player One” and the series “Silicon Valley”.
Childhood and youth
Todd Joseph “T. J.” Miller was born on June 4, 1981, in Denver, Colorado, the son of a clinical psychologist named Kent and attorney Leslie. Teejay has English, Swedish, German and Scottish roots, and his mother’s ancestors are German, Austrian, and Russian Jews. Miller became interested in the stage at school, where he participated in all drama productions. His theater teacher says Miller was “a typical class clown, but much more intuitive than the average teenager.” “He understands the fragility of the human soul better than any other child I’ve ever worked with,” his teacher recalled. Later, together with the whole circle, he auditioned for the theatrical group “ReceSs” – after listening, out of a hundred people, only he was accepted. Here TJ gained experience for 4 years. Tej graduated from George Washington University in Washington in 2003 with a BA in Psychology. During his student years, Miller constantly participated in comedy productions, and during the summer holidays, he studied circus art in Paris and attended the British American Drama Academy in London. During his senior year, TJ met the comedian and horse breeder Michael Tokaruk, who undertook to teach him how to ride horses and helped develop his sense of humor.
Stand up
After graduating from college, Miller moved to Chicago and began performing comedy and stand-up performances at local venues. He had his independent cast of actors improvise “Giggle Sandwich”. Almost every evening he appeared on the stage of nightclubs and bars and delighted visitors with fresh jokes. In 2008, the leading American weekly “Variety” named Teejay one of the 10 best comedians in the country, and after all, only 5 years have passed since the beginning of his career. In 2011, you could watch Miller’s hour-long stand-up performance “No Real Reason” on the Internet, and then the guy released the comedy album “Mash-Up Audiofile”. In 2015, Miller took part in the Comedy and Curiosity Festival tour organized by Funny or Die, which also included Amy Schumer, Aziz Ansari, and other comedians who are well-known to the Russian audience from numerous films and TV shows. On June 17, 2017, HBO premiered Miller’s comedy show T. J. Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous ”, which was filmed in his native Denver as part of the 2016 tour.
In 2007-2008, TJ starred in the show “Car Amateurs”, popular in the States. The actor made his film debut in 2008 – in the horror movie Monstro (Cloverfield) he appeared on the screen for only a few minutes, but his voice was present in almost every scene: Miller played a character who recorded most of the events on video with the main characters. In 2009, Tij appeared in the comedy The Salesman opposite Jeremy Piven and played the silly musician Rory in Mike Judge’s Extract. Then the actor could be seen in supporting roles in the films Too Cool for You, Escape from Vegas, and Uncontrollable.
In 2010, the actor voiced the character Tuff in the Oscar-nominated animated film How to Train Your Dragon (later in How to Train Your Dragon 2 and in the series Dragons: Race to the Edge) and appeared in the adventure film Gulliver’s Travels with Jack Black in the title role. In 2011-2012, TJ starred in the successful films My Dumb Brother (with Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, and Adam Scott), Rock for the Ages (a musical film with Tom Cruise, Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin, and Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (with Steve Carell and Keira Knightley). In 2013, the actor could be seen starring in the Goodwin Games TV series about separated brothers and sisters who get back together at their father’s funeral. The following year, TJ was lucky enough to star in the large-scale project “Transformers: Age of Extinction”, in which the actor played an old friend and coworker Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg). No less popular has become the comedy with Miller’s participation in “Naked Peppers’ ‘, according to the plot of which friends are going to reunite their friend with the girl he was going to marry. In addition, in 2014, the actor was cast in the lead role of Erlich Bachmann, a foul-mouthed pot-lover, software developer, and owner of an incubator for programmers in the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley. The actor notes the similarities between himself and his character: “He is kind of, to my great regret, an exaggerated version of some aspects of my personality, mixed with several fictional traits.” In 2016, Miller appeared in a supporting role in the superhero action movie Deadpool – the actor played the Weasel, Deadpool’s best friend (Ryan Reynolds).
