Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won a Golden Globe Award and three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Piven was born in Manhattan, New York, but grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, as a teenager. He played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop,... founded by his parents, Byrne Piven and Joyce Piven, both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop . Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school.
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