Jake Ryan (American actor)

Jake Ryan (born August 26, 2003) is an American actor. He has appeared in the Wes Anderson films Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Asteroid City (2023) as well as Bo Burnham's film Eighth Grade (2018) and Nasim Pedrad's sitcom Chad (2021–).

Career
Ryan took up acting at age five as a hobby, which turned into a job. He made his film debut in the horror film The Innkeepers (2011). He began a long-running collaboration with the auteur filmmaker Wes Anderson at age seven when he was cast as a young camper in Moonrise Kingdom (2012), partly because he could play piano. He felt "cozy" on set with Anderson and kept in touch with him by email. In March 2012, an eight-year-old Ryan narrated, and got a writing credit on, a one-minute stop motion advertisement for Sony Mobile that was directed by Anderson. He also appeared in a promotional short for Moonrise Kingdom (opposite Jason Schwartzman) and in commentary for the Criterion Collection releases of Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.

In the following years, Ryan had small parts in the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Anderson's Isle of Dogs (2018), and the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems (2019). In Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade (2018), he played a "scene-stealing" boy who takes the main character, Kayla, on a date over chicken nuggets and imitates Rick and Morty; the young actor found watching himself in the film cringeworthy. He began co-starring with Nasim Pedrad in the TBS sitcom Chad in April 2021.

In 2023, Ryan reunited with Anderson and Schwartzman in Asteroid City, playing the dual roles of awkward teenage brainiac Woodrow Steenbeck and an actor understudying for the part of Woodrow in a play.

Personal life
Ryan was homeschooled on Long Island, New York, from second grade. He took improvisational comedy classes with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York from age 15.