Jeremy Samuel Piven (born July 26, 1965) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmy Awards. He also starred in the British period drama Mr Selfridge, which tells the story of the man who created the English department store Selfridges, and portrayed Spence Kovak on Ellen DeGeneres's sitcom Ellen. Early years Piven was born in Manhattan and raised in a Reconstructionist Jewish family of Ukrainian Jewish descent. His parents are Byrne Piven (1929–2002) and Joyce Hiller Piven (née Goldstein), both of whom were actors and drama teachers. His elder sister is director Shira Piven, whom he has described as one of his first acting teachers; his brother-in-law is director Adam McKay. He grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and graduated from Evanston Township High School. As a teenager, he attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where he played Bernardo in West Side Story. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he departed after his sophomore year to attend New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He left Tisch during his senior year to pursue his acting career and is an alumnus of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop (as are Cusack's sisters Joan and Ann). Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school. Career One of Piven's early roles was Spike in Lucas (1986). His first important role came in 1992 when he became a regular cast member on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, where he played head writer Jerry. He left the show in the second season after growing tired of the role, because his character was not given much of a background. In 1993, he portrayed George Costanza on the show-within-a-show scene in the two-part Seinfeld episode "The Pilot". He was a supporting cast member on the last three seasons of the sitcom Ellen, where he played Ellen's cousin Spence. He also starred in and produced the short-lived ABC