30 Mesmerizing Facts About Jon Favreau We Bet You Never Knew

10 April 2019, 10:41 pm EDT By Ruby Karnick

Jon Favreau, who first gained world-wide recognition for his roles in "Rudy," "Swingers" and "Chef," among others, is famous for portraying the character of Happy Hogan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here are some facts about the American actor:

Favreau is a Hollywood actor, screenwriter, director and producer known for film project like ‘Swingers,’ ‘Elf,’ ‘Iron Man,’ and ‘The Jungle Book.’
He was born Jonathan KoliaFavreau, on October 19, 1966, in Flushing, Queens, New York, United States. As the only child, he was raised by his father, Charles, a special education teacher in Queens, New York, after mother, Madeleine, an elementary school teacher, died of leukemia when he was 12 years old.
His family is Jewish of Russian descent from his maternal side and a Catholic of Italian and French-Canadian ancestry from his paternal side. Favreau attended Hebrew School and had Bar Mitzvah ceremony.
He attended Bronx High School of Science when he spent his formative years in Forest Hills. After graduating in 1984, he joined Queens College as pre-engineering student, but didn’t do very well with the calculus and dropped out.
Favreau went by the nickname ‘Johnny Hack’ in college for his talent with Hacky Sack game. He got more involved with extracurricular stuff like the College Union Program Board and the Center for Human Relations rather with his studies.
According to him his time spent with the Student Union programming the fests the bands, which involved budgets, committees with sense of vision and direction and purpose helped him in his career in films. He was also the chairman of the Freshmen Weekend committee, which was based on interpersonal communication skills which are very helpful skill in film sets.
For several years he hosted a talk show very much like Dinner for Five, on the Independent Film Channel, in which he chatted over dinner with four show business guests. He also briefly worked for Bear Stearns on Wall Street in 1987,when he took a break from college.
In 1988, he moved to Chicago to pursue a career in comedy. He performed at several Chicago improvisational theatres, including the ImprovOlympic and the Improv Institute. It was a very good, healthy, creative environment which led him into Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists by doing few commercials.
Though Favreau made his appearance as an actor with ‘Hoffa’ and in ‘Folks’ as Chicago Taxi Driver, in 1992, he landed his first film role of substance alongside Sean Astin as football tutor D-Bob in the sleeper hit ‘Rudy’ in 1993.
He broke into TV with a role on the classic series, ‘Seinfeld’ as the Eric the Clown, in the episode ‘The Fire’ in 1994 and went on to appear in an another TV series ‘Chicago Hope ‘ as Dr. Tim Carney, in the same year.

He continued to move between TV series and film with ‘PCU,’ ‘Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,’ ‘Speechless,’ ‘Batman Forever,’ ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ ‘Notes from Underground,’ and in ‘Fallen Angels.’
Favreau moved to Los Angeles, where he made his breakthrough as an actor, screenwriter with 1996 film ‘Swingers.’ The film is based on his own experience he had when he moved to Los Angeles after he had broken up with his longtime girlfriend and counted on his friends to cheer him up.
Favreau wrote the screenplay in two weeks, with various friends in mind for key roles. He and his friends gave reader’s theatre performance of the script to drum up interest in and capital for the movie.
In 1997, he appeared on the television sitcom ‘Friends’ aired on NBC from September 22, 1994. Favreau was initially offered the role of Chandler Bing, he later returned as a guest star, as Pete Becker, Monica’s millionaire boyfriend who competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Favreau played lead in the 1998 film ‘Very Bad Things,’ and in 1999, he starred in the TV film ‘Rocky Marciano,’ based on the life of world heavyweight champion.He later appeared in ‘Love & Sex,’ co-starring Famke Janssen.
He appeared as maniacal linebacker Daniel Bateman in 2000’s ‘The Replacement,’ and that same year he played himself in ‘The Sopranos’ episode ‘D-Girl,’ as Hollywood director who feigns interest in developing mob associate Christopher Moltisanti’s screenplay in order to collect material for his own screenplay.
In 2001, he made is directional debut with ‘Made’ for which he wrote the screenplay and was also the lead cast. He once again teams up with his Swingers co-star Vince Vaughn and incidentally Favreau’s grandmother and Vince Vaughn’s dad make a cameo appearance.
With the 2003 Christmas comedy film ‘Elf’ Favreau, earned critical and commercial success. The film won two of the nine awards it was nominated and was ranked among the greatest Christmas films of the 21st century.
Favreau continued to make regular appearance in film and television. With romantic comedy film ‘The Break-up,’ he reunited with Vince Vaughn for the fourth time. He also made it in ‘My Name Is Earl’ as a reprehensible fast food manager and a guest appearance in Vaughn’s ‘Wild West Comedy Show.’
In 2005, he appeared as a guest judge and executive representative of Sony Corporation in week five of NBC primetime reality TV business show ‘The Apprentice’ which was hosted by Donald Trump, the executive producer. He was assigned the task of judging two teams designing and building a float to publicize his 2005 Sony Pictures movie ‘Zathura: A Space Adventure.’

His reputation as a director grew with huge critical and commercial success of ‘Iron Man’ movie. Favreau celebrated getting the job as director by going on a diet and losing seventy pounds. He was under lot of pressure for it to succeed for Marvel would’ve lost the intellectual property rights to their library.
Favreau co-starred in the romantic comedy film ‘Couples Retreat,’ for which he also co-wrote the screenplay. Irina Krupnik, the model in the photo to which Favreau was preparing to pleasure himself, sued NBC Universal for ten million dollars in March 2010 for publishing her likeness in a vulgar context. A judge ruled against her in July 2010.
Favreau returned to reprise his role as Happy Hogan in the ‘Iron Man 3’ from the first two films. This is the first in the Iron Man franchise not to be directed by him. He turned down the offer for this movie in order to direct Magic Kingdom.
He once again donned the role of directing, screenwriting and acting in the 2014 comedy drama ‘Chef.’ For the portrayal of chef, he was trained by food truck chef Roy Choi after Favreau promised to be absolutely authentic in his portrayal of a professional chef, right from folding the towel at the beginning to cleaning his station.
He directed the Destiny trailer ‘The Law of the Jungle’ and the 2016 film ‘The Jungle Book’ for Walt Disney Pictures. The film received praise for its vocal performance, direction, musical score and visual effects for which it won 89th Academy award, 22nd Critics’ Choice Award and 70th British Academy Film Awards.
Favreau is married to JoyaTillem, since November 24, 2000. The couple has a son, Max and two daughters, Madeleine and Brighton Rose. All three of Favreau’s children have voice roles in the movie ‘The Jungle Book.’
He returns as Happy Hogan in the film ‘Spider Man: Homecoming,’looking after Parker in the film. It is first time Favreau portrayed ‘Happy Hogan’ in a non-Iron Man movie which is scheduled to be released in July 2019.
He will appear in the 2019 film ‘Avengers:Endgame,’ the sequel to Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, directed by the Russo brothers. He is the executive producerof the film which will be released on April 26, 2019.
His directional venture in the upcoming fantasy drama film ‘The Lion King’ is under post production and set to release in July 2019. This is remake of the 1994 animated film and will be Favreau’s second live action Walt Disney Pictures based on a Disney animated movie after directing ‘The Jungle Book.’
From usher to extra to actor to auteur, Favreau is a true journeyman. For his unique approach to storytelling and for innovative work in digital film making, he is awarded with ‘2018 VES Lifetime Achievement Award.’