Benjamin David "Jamie" Elman (born July 5, 1976) is a
Canadian American actor, best known for his leading roles of Cody Miller on
YTV's ''
Student Bodies
''Student Bodies'' is a 1981 American parody slasher film written and directed by Mickey Rose, with an uncredited Michael Ritchie co-directing. A spoof of slasher horror films such as ''Halloween'', ''Friday the 13th'' and '' Prom Night'', '' ...
,'' Luke Foley in
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
's ''
American Dreams
''American Dreams'' is an American drama television series that ran on NBC for three seasons & 61 episodes, from September 29, 2002, to March 30, 2005. The show tells the story of the Pryor family of Philadelphia during the mid-1960s, with many ...
,'' and himself in ''
Yidlife Crisis
''Yidlife Crisis'' is a webTV comedy series starring Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion and launched in 2014.
Background
The comedians of the show grew up together and studied Yiddish at Bialik High School in Côte Saint-Luc in the suburbs of Montr ...
''.
Life and career
Elman was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
, and was raised in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
,
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...
. He attended
Jewish day school
A Jewish day school is a modern Jewish educational institution that is designed to provide children of Jewish parents with both a Jewish and a secular education in one school on a full-time basis. The term "day school" is used to differentiate s ...
in Montreal and has taught fourth-graders at a
synagogue religious school in Southern California.
In Montreal, Elman began performing in plays such as ''
The Children's Hour'' and ''
Annie Get Your Gun'' before landing his first roles in TV (''
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
''Are You Afraid of the Dark?'' is a horror anthology television series. The original series aired on Nickelodeon from 1992 to 1996; the pilot episode aired respectively on YTV and Nickelodeon in 1990 and 1991. It led to two revival series, wi ...
'') and film (''
Johnny Mnemonic
"Johnny Mnemonic" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It first appeared in '' Omni'' magazine in May 1981, and was subsequently included in ''Burning Chrome'', a 1986 collection of Gibson's short fiction. ...
''). Elman graduated from
McGill University
McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...
with a
BA in English.
He was part of the ensemble cast of the film ''
Shattered Glass'' opposite
Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen (; born April 19, 1981) is a Canadian actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader in the ''Star Wars'' media franchise. He first appeared in the prequel trilogy films, '' Star Wars: Episode ...
and
Peter Sarsgaard
John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. His first feature role was in '' Dead Man Walking'' in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films '' Another Day in Paradise'' and ''Desert Blue''. That same year, Sarsg ...
, and has guest-starred on numerous popular series including ''
Crossing Jordan
''Crossing Jordan'' is an American crime drama television series created by Tim Kring, that aired on NBC from September 24, 2001, to May 16, 2007. It stars Jill Hennessy as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, a crime-solving forensic pathologist employed i ...
'', ''
Criminal Minds
''Criminal Minds'' is an American police procedural crime drama television series created and produced by Jeff Davis. The series premiered on CBS on September 22, 2005, and originally concluded on February 19, 2020; it was revived in 2022. It ...
'', ''
Without a Trace
''Without a Trace'' is an American police procedural drama television series created by Hank Steinberg that aired on CBS from September 26, 2002 to May 19, 2009 with the total of seven seasons and 160 episodes. The series focuses the cases of ...
'', ''
CSI: NY'' and ''
The Closer
''The Closer'' is an American television police procedural starring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Leigh Johnson, a Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief. A CIA-trained interrogator originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Brenda has a reputation as a cl ...
''. Recent roles include starring opposite
Armand Assante
Armand Anthony Assante Jr. (; born October 4, 1949) is an American actor. He played mobster John Gotti in the 1996 HBO television film ''Gotti'', Odysseus in the 1997 mini-series adaptation of Homer's ''The Odyssey'', Nietzsche in ''When Nie ...
in ''California Dreaming'' which won the Un Certain Regard award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival; portraying a young
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, again opposite Assante and Ben Cross, in ''
When Nietzsche Wept
''When Nietzsche Wept'' is a 2007 American art drama film directed by Pinchas Perry and starring Armand Assante, Ben Cross and Katheryn Winnick. It is based on the novel of the same name by Irvin D. Yalom. It was filmed in Bulgaria.
Plot
T ...
''; and on the small screen, where he improvised with
Larry David
Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom ''Seinfeld'', on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first sev ...
in HBO's ''
Curb Your Enthusiasm
''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' is an American television sitcom produced and broadcast by HBO since October 15, 2000, and created by Larry David, who stars as a semi-fictionalized version of himself. It follows David's life as a semi-retired televis ...
''.
In 2009, Elman began work on his first webseries titled ''Brainstorm'' for
Dailymotion.com
Dailymotion is a French video-sharing technology platform owned by Vivendi. North American launch partners included Vice Media, Bloomberg and Hearst Digital Media. It is among the earliest known platforms to support HD (720p) resolution video ...
. In April 2010, Elman appeared on the soap opera ''
The Young and the Restless
''The Young and the Restless'' (often abbreviated as ''Y&R'') is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City (not the real-life similarly-named Genoa City ...
'' as Jamie Peterson.
Elman and
Eli Batalion direct and act in ''YidLife Crisis'', a series of short comedy sketches about two 30-something
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
friends. Most of the dialog is in
Yiddish, which the two use as a secret language, but subtitles are provided in English and French. The duo performed at Montreal's
Segal Centre for Performing Arts
The Segal Centre for Performing Arts, formerly the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, is a theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 5170 chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâ ...
for a week in January 2022.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
References
External links
*
*
Jamie's SpeedReel''YidLife Crisis''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elman, Jamie
1976 births
American male film actors
American male television actors
Canadian male film actors
Canadian male television actors
Jewish American male actors
Jewish Canadian male actors
Living people
Male actors from Montreal
Male actors from New York City
McGill University alumni
Yiddish-language satirists
21st-century American Jews