Biographie

After spending six seasons on 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996), he attended Columbia University in New York City. He studied history, literature and French poetry.

Had an older brother, Dan Gordon-Levitt, who passed away in October 2010. He was a photographer and a world-renowned fire spinner.

Speaks French.

Always wears colorful, mismatched socks as a tribute to his late brother.

When Marion Cotillard was honored at Hollywood Film Festival in 2012, he presented the tribute to her in French, Cotillard's native language. Levitt and Cotillard were co-stars in Origine (2010) and L'ascension du chevalier noir (2012).

The whole concept of celebrity pisses me off. While I'm not a celebrity, it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.

Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them. Brick - À la recherche d'Emily (2005) was a good script just to read. It was like, "Oh my God, these words feel so good in my mouth". A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick - À la recherche d'Emily (2005), the world is born from the words.

To me, a sex scene in a movie generally means a gratuitous scene that doesn't serve the story but gives a kind of excuse; we've got these two actors, we want to see them naked, so let's bring in the music and the soft light.

Actors didn't use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now there's this coming together of show business and celebrity. I don't think it's healthy. I don't want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines--it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. We're the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where you're a better person if you have more money. It's not at all about the work itself. Don't get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies.

[in 2004, about Souvenirs dans la peau (2004)] At the heart of the movie, to me, is there's these two characters that can have one horrible, traumatic experience but react to it in opposite ways and it shows how different people see things differently. Well, today, there's a president in my country that doesn't understand that and he thinks that if you don't see it exactly his way, you're wrong and evil. And that's not the way the world works. There can be one event but everybody who sees it sees it a little different or sees it a lot different and that's what the movies about and that's what damn "Dubya" [President George W. Bush] needs to understand. Or let him not understand it and go about his ways and go back to his ranch and never bother us again.