Born and raised in Los Angeles, actor Jonah Hill is best known for his mostly comedic roles in television and film. Hill’s acting debut came in 2004 in Dave Russell’s indie black comedy I Heart Huckabees, and has since gone on to appear in over 50 films. In recent years has made a name for himself in dramas like Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Martin Scorcese’s The Wolf of The Street, for which he was nominated for two academy awards.
Though he does not describe himself as a particularly Jewish person, Hill, born Jonah Hill Feldstein, was raised Jewish. He talked a bit about his spirituality during the press cycle for The Wolf of Wall Street as his character, Donnia Azoff, was partly inspired by a Jewish man. The semi-biographical film adaptation of the memoir by stockbroker Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) described a character who seeks to be seen as white, anglo saxon protestant to fit in among the debauched wealth around him.
In a 2014 interview with Jewish Journal, Hill discussed his complicated feelings “being someone who’s Jewish and playing someone who’s Jewish in such an unflattering way.”
Hill described himself as “not super religious in a 2014 Guardian interview. “I like the parts of Judaism that are about being with your family and being a good person more than the specific rules,” he said. “And lox. I really like the lox.”
In 2022, Hill filed a petition in the LA courts to legally change his last name to Hill (his legal middle name), removing his surname “Feldstein,” per Yahoo! News. A court date—a common formality in name change proceedings—was set for January 2023. Hill has not publicly commented on his reasoning.
He inherited the surname from his father, Richard Feldstein, who worked in the music industry in Hollywood. Hill’s sister, actress “Beeanie” Feldstein, uses the name, as did their late brother, music manager Jordan Feldstein, who passed away suddenly in 2017.
Hill stars in the recently released romcom You People, which he co-wrote with director Kenya Barris (black-ish, streaming now on Netflix.