Michael Carmen Pitt (born April 10, 1981) is an American actor, model, and musician. Pitt is known in film for his roles in Murder by Numbers (2002), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), Gus Van Sant's Last Days (2005), and Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007), and in television for his roles as Henry Parker in the teen drama Dawson's Creek (1999–2000), Jimmy Darmody in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2011), and Mason Verger in the second season of the NBC series Hannibal (2014). He has also appeared in the films Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Bully (2001), Silk (2007), Seven Psychopaths (2012), I Origins (2014), and Ghost in the Shell (2017). Early life Michael Carmen Pitt was born on April 10, 1981 in West Orange, New Jersey to Donald B. Pitt, an auto mechanic, and Eleanor Carol (née DeMaio) Pitt, a waitress. He has two older sisters and one older brother. Pitt is of Italian and Irish heritage on his mother's side, and of English descent on his father's. By age 16, Pitt had been to three or four different high schools, among them Morris Catholic High School, and was in "special classes" before ultimately dropping out. He also did a brief stint at the Essex County Youth House, a detention center. Career Film In 2001, Pitt earned a breakout role as Tommy Gnosis, the lover of a trans rock star named Hedwig, in the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, an adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell's 1998 stage musical. Although not his first film role, Pitt's performance as Gnosis led to a series of supporting roles in many acclaimed and often controversial films, including Larry Clark's Bully (2001), Murder by Numbers (2002), and Funny Games, a 2007 remake of Michael Haneke's 1997 film of the same title. One of Pitt's more notable roles was as the lead in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003). Pitt attributes his success in films to a combination of hard work and the presence of "a few angels in my life." He has also stressed that he chooses roles not with the hope that they will garner commercial success or to gain notoriety but to create art, challenge the audience, and ultimately contribute to a project that he is proud of: To be honest, I make very controversial films. The films that I've made have been very, very bold choices. As the years go by,