Jake Picking

 ( 1990s Births ) 

Picking's high school math teacher encouraged him to try out acting, and he took lessons with Carolyn Pickman, a casting agent who also represented Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Picking finally began attending auditions in Boston, in 2013 he made his feature film debut with a role in the youth film The Way, Way Back with Steve Carell. This was followed by guest appearances in the series Ironside (2013) and Chasing Life (2014). To start a professional acting career, he moved to Los Angeles, where he initially studied old Hollywood films with stars such as James Dean, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando or Montgomery Clift in his one-room apartment out of loneliness. He preferred moving to the West Coast to a possible acting course at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, although he had no contacts whatsoever in Los Angeles.

In the next years Picking was regularly in movie productions but mostly subscribed to support roles. In 2016, he was part of the ensemble of the drama Goat, which deals with physical and psychological violence in the American college fraternity landscape. In the role of the sadistic oath master Dixon, Picking tormented Brett, played by Nick Jonas. In the same year he appeared in the thriller Patriots Day, which dramatizes the attack on the Boston Marathon. Here he played the part of policeman Sean Collier, who is shot by the bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (played by Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze).

In 2022, Picking appeared in the Top Gun sequel as Lt. Brigham "Harvard" Lennox.