American actor Jeremy Davies was born on October 8, 1969 in Traverse City, Michigan, the son of children’s book author Mel Boring. He made his first screen appearance in 1990, with a bit role in an episode of Singer & Sons. He also had a small role for the television movie Shoot First: A Cop’s Vengeance. He also had guest stints in two episodes of The Wonder Years, an episode of Melrose Place and in the television thriller Guncrazy.
In 1993, Davies appeared in a television ad for Subaru, where he compared the car to punk rock. Casting agents and other Hollywood bigwigs took notice, and he began receiving feature film scripts, hoping he would consider. After roles in the 1994 films Spanking the Monkey and Neil, he starred in the 1996 disaster film Twister, where he played reserved tornado photographer Laurence.
Davies had another breakthrough when he was cast in the 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan. He played the role of Timothy E. Upham, an linguist in Normandy, who is recruited by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) after D-Day to assist in the search for a missing paratrooper (Matt Damon). His performance was applauded by critics, as well as most of the film, and he appeared in other productions. These include The Million Dollar Hotel, Investigating Sex, The Laramie Project, Searching for Paradise, Solaris and Dogville. He also appeared in the television movie Helter Skelter, playing notorious cult leader Charles Manson.
Davies has returned to television screens when he joined the cast of the television series Lost. He was given the role of Daniel Faraday, a physicist introduced in the show’s fourth season. He was soon seen in drama Manderlay, working with actors Willem Dafoe and Bryce Dallas Howard. In 2006, Davies was cast in the war drama Rescue Dawn, which starred Christian Bale, Zach Grenier and Marshall Bell. Most recently, he joined the cast of It's Kind of a Funny Story.
"Rescue Dawn was also chaotic, but again, to me, there’s the best kind of chaos. There’s the wrong kind of chaos, and there are certainly those sets, where you really feel the filmmaker is creating chaos out of insecurity, and really not knowing, and really not having a vision and not knowing what to say or how to ask for what they want, and that creates a certain kind of chaos that’s different from someone who really does know what they want, or really feels comfortable creating an atmosphere where the best kind of work happens."