Jesse Plemons Biography

Jesse Plemons was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as George, the brother in the 2021 drama The Power of the Dog.

TV audiences know him better as Landry from Friday Night Lights (2006-11) and as Todd, a dispassionate torturer-killer in Breaking Bad (the last two seasons, 2012-13).

Plemons has been onscreen most of his life, beginning with commercials and parts as an extra in westerns filmed near his hometown in Texas.

As a teen he traveled to Los Angeles and had several roles in television and film, but his big break came with Friday Night Lights.

Other film roles came, and Plemons was praised for performances in small roles in top-drawer films like The Master (2012, by Paul Thomas Anderson) and Bridge of Spies (2015, by Steven Spielberg).

His performance as a babyfaced, nonchalant killer in Breaking Bad was good enough to make a small role seem like a much larger role, and Plemons followed that with Emmy nominations for his 2015 roles in Fargo (the series) and an episode of Black Mirror (“The U.S.S. Callister”).

On Fargo he co-starred with Kirsten Dunst and played her husband; they became engaged to be married in 2017 and have two children. They played husband and wife again in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021, starring Benedict Cumberbatch), and were both nominated for Oscars.