Jeremy Allen White is not a brooding native son of Chicago, a misconception many have due to his Emmy-winning performance in The Bear. (He grew up in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood.) He’s not a brooding wannabe musician, though he took a turn as Bruce Springsteen in October’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Nor is he a former (yes, brooding) juvenile delinquent/science prodigy, as he played for a decade on TV’s Shameless. In fact, he’s not even Jeremy Allen White.
“That’s not how I understand myself,” he tells VF over Zoom, from his Los Angeles home. “It does feel like people are talking about someone I don’t know.” He uses his middle name professionally out of administrative necessity: The “Allen” was only added when he learned that another Jeremy White had previously registered with the Screen Actors Guild.
“I’d be very interested [to meet him],” White says of the alterna-White. “I could talk to him and maybe see if he could allow me to have Jeremy White back.”
Photographer Theo Wenner. Fashion Editor Tom Guinness.
Vintage jeans by Lee.Photographer Theo Wenner. Fashion Editor Tom Guinness.
In the meantime, he’s making his peace with public perception. “I think it’s always going to come back to me feeling lucky that I was able to work for a very long time in my late teens and throughout my 20s without having the burden of being a very public person,” he says. “Shameless was a popular TV show, but nobody ever wanted to interview me or anything. And if they did, I would catch myself doing like a Sean Penn impression—or, like, my understanding of Sean Penn. Trying to come off as over it in some way, or tough in some way. The Bear has taken me to a different level, but I’m lucky that it’s in my early 30s, where I think I feel a bit more settled in myself, and I don’t feel like I need to put on any self-serious or troubled attitudes.”
As if to prove it, he makes a joke: “I’m allowed to smile, although I won’t do it very often.” He smirks.
Though fame makes White uneasy, he’s fired up about the work that earned him those admirers. He looks up to a laundry list of leading men: Penn, of course, as well as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi. Some of them are known better for supporting roles—but regardless, “They just had this pursuit of working with really great writers and directors, and I hope that I’m given the opportunity to do the same thing. I just like to work with the directors that I love.”
