Will Arnett

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Date of Birth : May 4th 1970

Emmy Award-nominated Canadian-American actor known for his role as George Oscar “G.O.B.” Bluth II (pronounced Job, like the biblical figure) on the FOX comedy Arrested Development. Since his success on Arrested Development, Arnett has landed major film roles. He recently played a supporting role in the comedy film Blades of Glory and the antagonist in Hot Rod. He played the starring role in 2006’s Let’s Go To Prison. Arnett has also done work as a voiceover artist for commercials, films, and television programs.

Arnett was born in Toronto to Alexandra and E. James Arnett, a corporate lawyer, and brewer among many other occupations. In Toronto, he attended French-speaking schools. He still speaks French, but has stated that he is not currently fluent in the language. He graduated from Leaside High School and briefly attended Lakefield College School in Lakefield, Ontario. He attended Concordia University in Montreal for a semester, but dropped out. When he was a teenager, Arnett’s mother encouraged him to pursue an acting career and he began to audition for commercials in Toronto. He decided that he really enjoyed acting and that it was something that he wanted to do with his life. At age 20, in 1990, Arnett moved from Toronto to New York in order to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He began appearing in plays in New York and his first acting role was in the Felicity Huffman independent film Erie, which was filmed on the Erie Canal.

In 2001, Arnett was cast in another television pilot, Loomis, for CBS. The pilot starred comedian Cheri Oteri as a local news reporter, and Arnett played her slacker brother. The pilot was not picked up. In 2002, Arnett was once again cast in a fourth television pilot. This pilot was for the CBS sitcom Still Standing; but even though the show was picked up and ran for many years, his character was cut from the series after the pilot. Arnett became so frustrated, after his fourth failed pilot, that he “swore off pilots” altogether, until his agent persuaded him to audition for the pilot for Arrested Development.

Due to his work on Arrested Development and the fact that he was no longer tied down to the series after its cancellation, Arnett began being cast in large roles in a number of films. Although he worked largely as a dramatic actor in films before Arrested Development, the roles that he has taken since have been mostly comedic, often playing smug bad guys. Despite the fact that Arnett has emerged as a comedic actor, Arnett “never considered himself a comic” and considers himself an “actor first.”