Rainn Wilson | Actor, Comedian Film Producer, Climate Advocate, and a Member of the Advisory Board of Arctic Basecamp

Rainn Wilson

Actor, Comedian Film Producer, Climate Advocate, and a Member of the Advisory Board of Arctic Basecamp

Rainn Wilson
Biography

Rainn Wilson is in the cast of the new and zeitgeist-y Amazon series  Utopia based on the popular UK format. Wilson can be seen in the upcoming indie feature Blackbird starring opposite Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon. He can also be seen in the upcoming indie feature Don’t Tell A Soul, and co-starred in the Warner Bros summer tentpole hit  Meg, for producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura opposite Jason Statham. On TV, Wilson appears in the new Star Trek series as the iconic con-man Harry Mudd; recurs on Chuck Lorre’s comedy Mom as Allison Janney's therapist; and revised his undertaker role Arthur from Six Feet Under in an appearance in the finale on Amazon's flagship series Transparent. He is next shooting The Power for Amazon, opposite Leslie Mann.

Wilson is an Emmy nominated and SAG award-winning actor who has found himself in a variety of comedic and theatrical roles throughout his career. His first breakthrough role came when he played assistant mortician “Arthur Martin” in HBO’s Six Feet Under, winning him and the cast a Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.” Wilson is best known for playing the inimitable “Dwight Schrute” for nine seasons on NBC’s Emmy award winning comedy, The Office .

Wilson’s film credits include Netflix feature, Shimmer Lake, directed by Oren Uziel; Hesher, opposite Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levett; Super, with Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, and Ellen Page; Cooties opposite Elijah Wood; and the acclaimed comedies Juno; Almost Famous; and Permanent, opposite Patricia Arquette. He is upcoming in the indie feature thriller Don’t Tell a Soul.

On TV, Wilson portrayed the irascible but brilliant Detective Everett Backstrom in FOX's subversive/comic crime procedural Backstrom, as well as a special guest star role in Cameron Crowe’s Showtime series Roadies, and he recently starred in an episode of the HBO anthology series Room 104 from the Duplass Brothers.

Wilson has an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, and spent ten years doing theatre in New York before moving to Los Angeles. He was on Broadway in The Tempest with Patrick Stewart, and the Tony nominated London Assurance. Wilson worked off-Broadway at The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons, and performed regularly at The Arena Stage, The Guthrie, and with the touring repertory theater The Acting Company. The comedy show he created, The New Bonanza, had a successful off-Broadway run at The Cherry Lane, and later played in Los Angeles at The Hudson Guild and The Tiffany.

Wilson performed the critically acclaimed one-person monologue Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) at The Geffen; and most recently, he was the lead role in the political farce, The Doppelganger, at Steppenwolf Theater.

Wilson founded the YouTube channel Soul Pancake, which has over 2.6 million subscribers. In 2015 he published his memoir, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy.

Rainn Wilson
Featured Videos

Current: Rainn Wilson Commencement Address

Time 15:19

More Videos From Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson Commencement Address
Time 15:19
GMA
Time 09:34
Late Night with James Corden
Time 09:49

SoulPancake Chewing on Life’s Big Questions

How do you reset your creativity? Find your true creative purpose? How do you move out of your comfort zone to accomplish something new, even life-changing? A captivating speaker, Rainn Wilson is a modern Renaissance figure whose own artistic and spiritual journey has inspired audiences around the country to rethink their approaches to creativity, personal expression, and happiness. This talk draws heavily on what inspired the founding of Wilson’s company, SoulPancake, which provides a space for people from all walks of life to discuss what it means to be human. It opens a heartfelt dialogue around philosophy, spirituality, and your creative endeavors. An award-winning actor, media company founder, philanthropist, and education advocate, Wilson also shares funny and soulful stories and videos from his far-reaching, one-of-a-kind career in order to help you think about your own. When you express your best self, when you work for the happiness of others, he says, you will find a meaning that is deeply nourishing and sustainable.

Rainn Wilson
Featured Book

The Bassoon King: Art, Idiocy, and Other Sordid Tales from the Band Roomby Rainn Wilson

The Bassoon King: Art, Idiocy, and Other Sordid Tales from the Band Room

by Rainn Wilson
Rainn Wilson’s memoir about growing up geeky and finally finding his place in comedy, faith, and life 
 
For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite work nemesis and beet farmer. Viewers of The Office fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. Rainn founded a website and media company, SoulPancake, that eventually became a bestselling book of the same name. He also started a hilarious Twitter feed (sample tweet: “I'm not on Facebook” is the new “I don't even own a TV”) that now has more than four million followers.
 
Now, he's ready to tell his own story and explain how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. He explains how he grew up “bone-numbingly nerdy before there was even a modicum of cool attached to the word.” The Bassoon King chronicles his journey from nerd to drama geek (“the highest rung on the vast, pimply ladder of high school losers”), his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures and insights about The Office, and finally, Wilson's achievement of success and satisfaction, both in his career and spiritually, reconnecting with the artistic and creative values of the Bahá’í faith he grew up in.
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