Ben Schnetzer

BEN SCHNETZER

Date of Birth: February 8, 1990

For Ben Schnetzer, acting is genetic.

Ben, born in New York, is the son of actors Stephen Schnetzer and Nancy Snyder. He followed in his parents' path when he tried acting for the first time as a teen.

He landed his first film role in the 2007 drama Ben's Plan, and transitioned to television in 2010 with guest appearance on an episode of Law & Order. In the same year, he also played Andrew Haplin on all eight episodes of the mystery series Happy Town.

After Happy Town wrapped, Ben decided to study his craft more seriously and relocated to London to attend the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Upon his graduation in 2013, he immediately secured film roles. He played a German-Jewish fugitive in the 2013 Oscar-nominated The Book Thief with Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson, a snobbish Anglo-Greek student in the 2014 thriller The Riot Club with Sam Claflin, and committed Northern Irish gay activist Mark Ashton in 2014's Pride. For his work in Pride, he was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Promising Newcomer categories at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards.

In 2016, Ben exercised his action muscles in Warcraft, a fantasy adventure adapted from a video game. He shared the screen with Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Toby Kebbell and Dominic Cooper.

In the same year, he took the lead role in the drama Goat, about a 19-year-old student who enrolls in the same college as his older brother and undergoes barbaric treatment while pledging the same fraternity. Nick Jonas plays his older brother in the film.

With the Oliver Stone-directed biopic Snowden (2016), Ben had the opportunity to work with several Hollywood heavyweights, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zachary Quinto, Shailene Woodley, Scott Eastwood, Melissa Leo, Timothy Olyphant, Nicolas Cage and Tom Wilkinson.

More recently, he played a role in the thriller 7 Days in Entebbe (2018).

Ben, who has said he'd love to direct theater one day, describes himself as a morning person. In his spare time he enjoys reading, drawing (charcoal sketches), painting, listening to music and going to watch live theatre.

Photo: © Kathy Hutchins/Keystone Press via ZUMA Press

Filmography:

7 Days in Entebbe (2018)
The Grizzlies (2017)
The Journey Is the Destination (2016)
Snowden (2016)
Goat (2016)
Warcraft (2016)
Pride (2014)
The Riot Club (2014)
The Book Thief (2013)
Ben's Plan (2007)