Jack Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian and musician. Black's acting career began with primetime TV roles, and then with small roles in 1990s films such as Dead Man Walking and Enemy of the State.
By the 2000s, he was cast in lead roles in comedy films such as Shallow Hal and School of Rock and in dramas such as King Kong and The Holiday. He is a member of the so-called Frat Pack, a media term for a group of comedians active in Hollywood films. He has been nominated for a Golden Globe award.
Black and Kyle Gass make up the comedy and rock music duo Tenacious D. The duo has released two albums, Tenacious D, and its follow up, The Pick of Destiny.
Jack Black was rat-catcher and mole destroyer by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Black cut a striking figure in his self-made "uniform" of scarlet topcoat, waistcoat, and breeches, with a huge leather belt inset with cast-iron rats.
He is known particularly through Henry Mayhew's account in London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3, where he tells Mayhew of his work and experiences, including a number of occasions when he nearly died from infection following rat bites.
When he caught any unusually coloured rats, he bred them, to establish new colour varieties. He would sell his home-bred domesticated coloured rats as pets, mainly, as Black observed, "...to well-bred young ladies to keep in squirrel cages." Beatrix Potter is believed to have been one of his customers, and she dedicated the book Samuel Whiskers to her rat of the same name. The more sophisticated ladies of court kept their rats in dainty gilded cages, and even Queen Victoria herself kept a rat or two. It was in this way that domesticated—or fancy—rats were established.
Black had a number of sidelines beyond rats, including fishing (for food and supplying aquaria), bird catching and taxidermy. He was also an accomplished dog breeder. He told Mayhew: "I had a little rat dog—a black tan terrier by the name of Billy which was the greatest stock dog in London of that day. He was the father of the greatest portion of small black tan dogs in London now. I've been offered a sovereign per pound (in weight) for some of my little terriers, but I wouldn't take that price, for they weren't heavier than two or three pounds. I once sold one of the dogs to the Austrian Ambassador...My terrier dog was known to all the London fancy. As rat-killing dogs, there's no equal to that strain of black tan terriers."
Jack Black was a late 19th century/early 20th century hobo and professional burglar, living out the dying age of the Wild West. He wrote You Can't Win, a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an honorable outlaw. Black's book was written as an anti-crime book urging criminals to go straight but is also his statement of belief in the futility of prisons and the criminal justice system, hence the title of the book. Jack Black was writing from experience, having spent 20 years as a traveling criminal and offers extremely riveting tales of being a cross-country stick-up man, home burglar, petty thief and opium fiend.
Jack Black is an essentially anonymous figure (even his actual name is uncertain) who is recognised through association with William S. Burroughs. Although his philosophy on life was epically influential to Burroughs, who associated with similar characters in his early adulthood and mirrored the style of "You Can't Win" with his first published book, "Junkie", Black's writings also had a profound effect on the writings and lives of all the Beat Generation.
Jack Black eventually composed essays on prison reform and was also rumored to have received a stipend of $150 dollars a week to draft a screenplay titled "Salt Chunk Mary", based around the infamous vagabond advocate and ally of the same name in "You Can't Win". The play flopped, although he was able to attain some amount of popularity, which subsided quickly. He died during the Great Depression due to a drowning, widely believed to be a suicide.
