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Jason Alexander

American actor, comedian, director and television host

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ311754
Source-derived summary

Jason Alexander (born Jay Scott Greenspan; September 23, 1959) is an American actor and comedian. Over the course of his career, he has received an Emmy Award and a Tony Award as well as nominations for four Golden Globe Awards. He gained stardom for his role as George Costanza in the NBC sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series and was nominated for seven consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and four Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actor in Television.

Alexander made his Broadway debut originating the role of Joe in Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along in 1981. He remained active on Broadway acting in the musicals The Rink in 1984 and the Neil Simon play Broadway Bound in 1986. He then starred in Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. His subsequent theatre roles include the touring production of The Producers from 2003 to 2004 and replacing Larry David in the original 2015 Broadway production of Fish in the Dark. He has also directed several plays such as the original 2023 Broadway production of The Cottage.

His film roles include Pretty Woman (1990), Jacob's Ladder (1990), Coneheads (1993), The Paper (1994), Dunston Checks In (1996), Shallow Hal (2001), and Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009). He voiced the gargoyle Hugo in the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and the titular role in Duckman (1994–1997).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jason Alexander” is american actor, comedian, director and television host. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jason, Alexander and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1989, 1998, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959-09-23. For this dossier, Jason, Alexander and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american actor, comedian, director and television host” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311754. VIAF identifies the subject as 39573643. The Library of Congress control number is no96055075. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1989, 1998 and 1981.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jason Alexander”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jason Alexander primary sources, Jason Alexander archive and Jason research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jason Alexander”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jason Alexander” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.