Danny Strong Biography

Daniel W. "Danny" Strong (born June 6, 1974) is an American actor and Emmy-winning writer in film and television. Strong is best known for his role as Jonathan Levinson in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He also wrote the screenplays for Recount, the HBO adaptation Game Change, and Lee Daniels' The Butler.

Early life

Strong was born and raised in Manhattan Beach, California, where he began acting at a young age. He would rent videos from Video Archives, becoming friends with Quentin Tarantino, who worked there as a clerk. "I would just literally sit and chat with him for 45 minutes, an hour at a time about movies, and he got me turned on to all these different movies that 10 year olds don't see." Strong studied film and theatre at the University of Southern California.

Career

Acting

Strong is known for playing Jonathan Levinson on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Paris Geller's boyfriend Doyle McMaster on Gilmore Girls, but he has also appeared in films such as Pleasantville, Dangerous Minds, the spoof Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The Thirteenth, and was in the film Sydney White as the Grumpy dork, Gurkin. Strong has also had guest parts in sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Clueless, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Over the Top, Grey's Anatomy and How I Met Your Mother and has also guest-lectured in acting classes on finding a job as an actor. Most recently, Strong appeared in the popular AMC series Mad Men as Danny Siegel, a young man with no talent, trying to break into the advertising industry, later making a career in Hollywood.

Writing

Strong systematically worked at and finally succeeded at breaking into writing, with the script for Recount, a film about the 2000 US Elections, produced by HBO and directed by Jay Roach, with an air date of May 25, 2008. Strong was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special for Recount and won a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for a Television movie.

Strong was the writer for the 2012 film adaptation of Game Change based on the book written by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. In 2012, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special for Game Change.

In February 2012, he was approached to write the screenplay for the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

Strong wrote the screenplay for the film The Butler, with director Lee Daniels. He also had a cameo in the film.

On December 6, 2012, Strong confirmed that he will be writing the two-part Mockingjay, the finale of The Hunger Games series. Part 1 is set to be released in November 2014, and Part 2 is set to be released in November 2015.