Joseph Mazzello
Joseph Mazzello is an actor, born 1983.
Joseph Mazzello was born in Rhinebeck, New York in 1983 and was working before he turned seven, with a small part in Presumed Innocent. Jurassic Park made him internationally recognisable at nine: Tim is the dinosaur-obsessed kid, the one on the fence, and Mazzello spends most of that film being frightened at close range and gets it right. The child career that followed was unusually good, Radio Flyer, Shadowlands, The River Wild, The Cure, Simon Birch, rather than the usual sitcom conveyor belt.
The adult career took a shape almost nobody plans: he became a specialist in playing real people, and specifically in playing the quiet one at the edge of the frame. Eugene Sledge in The Pacific is the moral centre of ten hours of television, a bookish volunteer whose face does the whole arc. Dustin Moskovitz in The Social Network is the friend who says almost nothing while the room turns on itself, and the film uses his silence as a running measurement. John Deacon in Bohemian Rhapsody is the bassist watching three louder men argue, which is close to a documentary observation about the band.
That is the through-line: he is very good at reacting, and he built a second career out of a skill most leading men never develop. He has also moved behind the camera, directing the baseball comedy Undrafted in 2016.
Movies (21)
- The Social Network (2010)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
- G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
- Presumed Innocent (1990)
- The Cure (1995)
- The River Wild (1994)
- Raising Helen (2004)
- Radio Flyer (1992)
- Shadowlands (1993)
- Star Kid (1997)
- Simon Birch (1998)
- Three Wishes (1995)
- Return to Jurassic Park (2011)
- Jersey Girl (1992)
- Undrafted (2016)
- Undrafted (2016)
- Wooly Boys (2001)
- Monument (2026)
- The Making of 'Jurassic Park' (1995)
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
TV (2)
Where to start with Joseph Mazzello
If you have ten hours, spend them on The Pacific. Sledge is his best performance by a wide margin, and the last third of the series rests almost entirely on what Mazzello does with a face that has stopped reacting to anything.
Jurassic Park is the nostalgic entry point and holds up, then The Lost World: Jurassic Park for the brief return.
For the adult run, The Social Network rewards a rewatch specifically to track him, since he is the character the film keeps cutting to for a verdict. Bohemian Rhapsody is the crowd-pleaser and he is the most restrained thing in it. Then go back for The River Wild and Shadowlands, both of which are better films than his child-actor reputation suggests.