Rain is letting up over Comerica Park. The Tigers are about to kick off a three-day series against the Athletics. Photographer Chuk Nowak and I have been escorted into a top-floor suite and told, “Wait here for J.K.”
I pace around a bit and help Chuk by standing in for some test shots, and suddenly, the door swings open. In spills a small entourage of men in baseball fan garb. From the center emerges Jonathan Kimble Simmons — Oscar-winning actor, Grosse Pointe native, and die-hard Detroit Tigers fan — with piercing eyes, a long silvery beard, and an Old English “D” cap. Chuk and I introduce ourselves and shake his hand.
While it’s a little embarrassing to admit, I always imagined Simmons to be at least 7 feet tall (he’s closer to 6 feet) and somewhat formidable. But I think that speaks to the lasting impact of his performance as the memorable villain Terence Fletcher, the abusive college jazz instructor with a penchant for black T-shirts in Whiplash.
Though the film turned 11 this year, it’s still one of the first that come to mind when one thinks of Simmons. The breakout for then-28-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle continues to be lauded by critics as one of the best of the decade, of the 21st century — hell, of all time. It also earned Simmons his first Academy Award, for best supporting actor, in 2015 — and he went on to appear in Chazelle’s next film, La La Land, released the following year.
It may be surprising that an actor of his caliber signed on to the first incarnation of Whiplash, a 20-minute proof-of-concept film penned by a young, unknown filmmaker, in 2013. But to Simmons, “It didn’t matter that we were making a short film in four days and nobody was getting paid — it was just a genius work of art that I knew I wanted to be a part of,” he says.
And after the full feature hit theaters, it paid off, if awards are something you care about; in addition to the Oscar, the same year, his performance earned him a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and awards from multiple festivals and dozens of critics associations. Although to be fair, he did lose out to Meryl Streep for “best villain” at the MTV Movie Awards.
“The fact that a bunch of acting trophies kept landing in my lap every other week for months after that was great,” Simmons says. “It was kind of silly in a way. But the reason to do the work is to do the work and to tell whatever the story is that some wonderful writer and director have created.”
Jason Reitman, an executive producer on Whiplash, first suggested Simmons read for it. A longtime collaborator of his, Reitman had directed Simmons on several projects (Juno, Thank You for Smoking, Up in the Air) before Whiplash and afterward cast him in his 2018 political drama The Front Runner. Although technically old enough to be Reitman’s father, Simmons often refers to Reitman as his “mentor” who helped him to navigate the world of screen acting.
In a statement to Hour Detroit, Reitman says Simmons is “unequaled in his ability to exhibit both heartbreaking tenderness and bone-chilling ferocity at full volume with nothing but complete truth.”
Reitman adds, “He has the relative range of 10 octaves as an actor. He is a soprano, an alto, a baritone, and a bass that can hit notes which conjure the furthest depth of the ocean. What a gift to cinema and a gift in my life.”
At age 70, Simmons has over 200 film and television credits to date — and counting. At the time of our interview, The Accountant 2 is playing in theaters, in which he reprises his role as Treasury Department agent Ray King. In July, he went to Toronto to film an MGM series called The Westies, a crime thriller about an Irish gang set in 1980s New York. Currently in postproduction is The Prince — a film said to be loosely inspired by the life of Hunter Biden — in which he’s set to star with Nicolas Cage and Giancarlo Esposito. Another upcoming end-of-Cold War historical drama, Reykjavik, will see Simmons cast as Secretary of State George Shultz alongside fellow Michigan native Jeff Daniels, who is playing Ronald Reagan.
This year, he’s also received his first Emmy nomination for his role as Jackson Pepper in the Roku Channel series Die Hart: Hart To Kill.
Not only does his industrious acting career show no signs of slowing down, but the guy is physically fit as ever. In recent years, photos of his impressive workout routine have gone viral — and he notably portrays a shredded Santa in Red One, which came out last November.
I think 2025 might be my favorite Tiger team of all time.
To this day, he continues to work closely with a personal trainer — who, he tells me, would not be pleased if he caught wind Simmons was even considering ordering a Coney at the game, so I won’t write anything about that.
But on the topic of Detroit emblems, the Detroit Tigers have been a through line in Simmons’s life and career. He remembers the first time his parents took him to a game at the old Tiger Stadium on Michigan and Trumbull. Though they were way out in the nosebleeds, it was a sight that stayed with him.
“That memory is indelible,” he says. “It reminds me of the first time I saw the Swan mountains in Montana driving around the bend — this magnificent, in that case, natural beauty, but in this case, man-made beauty of a baseball diamond, which is the Field of Dreams for all of us.”
While it wasn’t an outing they could afford on a regular basis — at the time, they lived on his father’s music teacher salary at Parcells Junior High (now Middle School) in Grosse Pointe Woods — his parents did their best to support their children’s interests.
“They always encouraged whatever any of us three kids were excited about, whether it was Little League or music or whatever it might have been,” he says. And at the time, baseball was a big one for him.
When he was 10, his dad accepted an offer at Ohio State University, and the family moved to Columbus, leaving behind his native Grosse Pointe. It was there that he underwent his first team-loyalty trial, so to speak.
“My new friends in Ohio were Reds fans, or Indians fans, and they were sort of trying to recruit me,” he says. “But I was just adamant to stay a Tigers fan.”
And the year he turned 13, he felt especially good about that decision because he really got to rub it in their faces; it was 1968, when the Tigers trounced the St. Louis Cardinals in the first of two World Series wins in Simmons’s lifetime (so far). To this day, Al Kaline, the star right fielder from that era, remains his favorite Tiger.
“I met him at a game at Comerica; it might have been opening day 10 years ago when I threw out the opening day first pitch, which was the most nerve-racking thing in my entire life,” Simmons says. “But just to get a chance to shake his hand — obviously, he’s Mr. Tiger. An iconic guy and a great person.”
He looks back fondly — as many fans do — at the Roar of ’84. By then, at 29, he was a scrappy theater actor trying to make it in New York. That year, he had a small part in a touring production of Doonesbury, and during that time, he was still faithfully tuned in to games. But his favorite Tigers lineup?
“I think 2025 might be my favorite Tiger team of all time,” he says. “[1984] was a fantastic team and I loved the Leyland years, but I love this team and this organization the way it is now. It feels like there’s a great camaraderie and a great sense of team. I love the way these guys work as a unit.”
While Simmons poses for portraits for our photographer, I chat with his cousin Ron Jensen, a Chicago Cubs fan who goes by the nickname “Weed.” He, along with two of Simmons’s friends — one a Reds fan, the other a Cardinals fan — has joined the actor on a Midwest baseball tour, which is their annual tradition.
Weed fondly recalls when Simmons got him a seat at Studio 8H when Simmons made his debut as a Saturday Night Live host in 2015 and says he has been nothing but generous to the family following his meteoric rise to fame. A native of Illinois, Weed is a former journalist who covered both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for Stars and Stripes. We grumble a bit about the shrinking state of print.
I recently realized that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films — which I watched as they came out when I was a kid — were the first movies I saw that depicted the inner workings of a newsroom. Simmons’s portrayal of the Daily Bugle’s cutthroat editor-in-chief, J. Jonah Jameson, felt especially genuine upon a recent movie marathon with my girlfriend.
When I tell Simmons this, he lets me know that he prepared for the role by spending four days at the New York Post, mostly observing how the staff interacted with one another. But above all, he wanted the role to be authentic to the comics, which he and Weed grew up reading.
Raimi, who’s from Royal Oak (though the two never met before Simmons auditioned for him), gave Simmons his transitional role from stage acting into film with his part as fictional Tigers manager Frank Perry in the 1999 film For Love of the Game, a role that Simmons has since admitted was inspired directly by legendary Tigers coach Jim Leyland.
He befriended one of the extras on the set, former MLB pitcher Jim Colborn, who was good friends with then Tigers first base coach Mick Kelleher. In 2005, for Simmons’s 50th birthday, his brother, David, got a hold of Colborn, who got a hold of Kelleher, who got the whole team to sign a jersey that said “Simmons” on the back with a big No. 50.
Simmons quickly points out that those weren’t the golden years for the Tigers, who just a season prior had finished with the worst record in American League history: 43-119.
“Today, I proudly own a T-shirt autographed by the worst team in the history of the American League,” he says, chuckling. “But you know, you’ve got to rebuild sometimes, and they were still my Tigers, and I loved them.”
Following For Love of the Game, Raimi would go on to cast Simmons in the 2000 supernatural thriller The Gift followed by the Spider-Man trilogy. Though they haven’t worked together in a while, the two keep in touch, and Simmons often says that he’d do “almost anything” directed by Raimi.
“Sam is a combination of a genius talent and a really amiable, down-to-earth Midwest guy,” Simmons says. “He trusted me and saw something in me that I could not only play the different characters that he wanted me to play, but also trusted me to improvise a little bit, to bring my own stuff to it, which is my favorite kind of director.”
Another iconic role of his — neo-Nazi prisoner Vernon Schillinger in the late-’90s/early-’00s HBO series Oz — has a Tigers story to go with it. Around the time that they were shooting Season 2, his co-star British actor Eamonn Walker was “foolishly talking about cricket one day,” Simmons recalls. And he was like, “No, dude.” So he brought Walker to a Tigers game at Yankee Stadium.
“We drew quite a lot of attention from the crowd: the head of the Aryan Brotherhood and the head of the Black Muslims — one’s wearing a Tigers cap, and one’s wearing a Yankees cap. What is wrong with this picture?” Simmons says. “I think I began teaching Eamonn a little bit of how to appreciate good old American baseball, and the Tigers won. So it was a good day.”
Over the years, Simmons has been a regular guest at games and in the booth, cementing himself among Tigers fans almost as an unofficial mascot, a good-luck charm. So what does he like most about visiting Detroit?
“For somebody who’s lived in LA and New York most of my adult life now, Detroit is the perfect combination to me,” he says. “It’s got everything you need in a big city, but it’s still got that smallish-town Midwest vibe to the way people treat each other, you know? It’s always a breath of fresh air to come back here.”
The first pitch he threw at Comerica Park’s 2015 opening day has its own official Topps baseball card; he owns a few. Two days after our interview, he throws out the first pitch at Cleveland’s Progressive Field at a Cardinals vs. Guardians game. Online, fans point out that underneath his Guardians jersey, he’s wearing a Tigers tee — and ever since he made the pitch, the Guardians have had a record losing streak.
This story originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine and has been updated. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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