and Eric Bogosian's Suburbia. After his breakout film role in 1994's Reality Bites, Zahn quickly gained a reputation for playing amiable stoners, slackers, and sidekicks in films such as That Thing You Do! (1996), You've Got Mail (1998), and Out of Sight (1998). In the 1990s, Zahn was often approached by fans who assumed that he was an archetypal Generation X slacker, which was not the case. He has said, "I'm the guy who gets up at six without an alarm clock. I was always that guy." In 1999, Zahn landed his first starring role in the critically acclaimed indie film Happy, Texas, for which he won a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In the wake of Happy, Texas, Zahn began playing darker, more nuanced characters. He received Oscar buzz for his role as Drew Barrymore's deadbeat ex in Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and played investigative journalist Adam Penenberg in Shattered Glass (2003). A longtime Werner Herzog fan, Zahn campaigned for the role of Vietnam prisoner of war Duane W. Martin in Herzog's 2007 film Rescue Dawn; to prepare for the role, he lost 40 pounds by eating mostly raw food. Zahn has also worked regularly in television, playing the role of Davis McClary on 36 episodes of HBO's Treme. In 2017, Zahn played Bad Ape in War for the Planet of the Apes. He researched the role by watching chimpanzee videos on YouTube, and later said that the motion capture process and lengthy digital takes made Bad Ape "the most challenging acting job I've ever had". Personal life Zahn met author and theater artist Robyn Peterman, the daughter of clothier J. Peterman, while they were performing in a national tour of Bye Bye Birdie in 1991. The couple married in 1994 and have two children. In the 1990s, they bought a cabin in Pennsylvania and then a farm in New Jersey, near the Delaware Water Gap. They next moved to a 360-acre horse farm outside Lexington, Kentucky, where Zahn gardens and raises horses, goats, and sheep. He and his wife also run a local community theater, in which Zahn occasionally performs. He also has a lake cabin near Pine City, Minnesota, where he enjoys tubing and fishing with his two children. He is a Lutheran. Zahn is a lifelong military history buff and has said that one of his biggest regrets was having turned