Jason Ritter
Jason Ritter is an actor, born 1980.
Ritter is the son of John Ritter and Nancy Morgan, and the earliest credit on his record is a joke about exactly that: an uncredited baby in a stroller in They All Laughed, filmed when he was about a year old. The career proper started with Kevin Girardi on Joan of Arcadia in 2003.
What he does is a specific and slightly unsettling thing: he is American television's most reliable nice guy, and he is best when something is wrong underneath it. Mark Cyr on Parenthood, which brought a 2012 Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding guest actor, is the warm version. Bill in The Tale is the version with the floor removed, a performance of enormous discipline in a film that gives him nowhere to hide. Frederick Bellacourt on Another Period is the idiot version, and he is extremely funny in it.
The best sustained work may be the voice acting. Dipper Pines on Gravity Falls, across the 2012 to 2016 run, is an anxious twelve-year-old with a notebook, played completely straight in a show that could easily have made him a mascot, and it is the reason a whole generation knows his voice before his face. He also voices Ryder in Frozen II and the lead of Captain Fall.
Elsewhere: Wil in You're Not You, Jeb Bush in W., Tim in The East, Pat on Raising Dion, Julian Markston on Matlock since 2024, and, delightfully, an uncredited Clicker on The Last of Us.
Movies (25)
- I Love Boosters (2026)
- Frozen II (2019)
- Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
- The Wicker Man (2006)
- W. (2008)
- Swimfan (2002)
- The East (2013)
- The Tale (2018)
- You're Not You (2014)
- Happy Endings (2005)
- Raise Your Voice (2004)
- 7 Minutes (2014)
- Carrie Pilby (2017)
- The Meddler (2016)
- Mumford (1999)
- Call Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
- Good Dick (2008)
- About Alex (2014)
- We'll Never Have Paris (2014)
- The Deal (2008)
- Bitch (2017)
- The Intervention (2016)
- They All Laughed (1981)
- A Bag of Hammers (2011)
- One Crazy Summer: A Look Back at Gravity Falls (2018)
TV (19)
- The Last of Us (2023)
- Gravity Falls (2012)
- Parenthood (2010)
- Matlock (2024)
- A Million Little Things (2018)
- Joan of Arcadia (2003)
- Drunk History (2013)
- After Midnight (2024)
- The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999)
- Another Period (2015)
- Raising Dion (2019)
- The Event (2010)
- Hollywood Squares (2025)
- The New Tom Green Show (2003)
- Candy (2022)
- Captain Fall (2023)
- The Class (2006)
- WWII in HD (2009)
- Kevin (Probably) Saves the World (2017)
Where to start with Jason Ritter
Gravity Falls is where to start, and not only because it is the best thing on the list. Dipper is a genuinely good piece of voice acting, anxious and earnest without ever being cute, and the show around it is one of the great American cartoons.
For live action, Parenthood is the role that got him the Emmy nomination and the easiest demonstration of what he is for. Joan of Arcadia is the early one and holds up better than most 2003 network drama. Another Period is the comic showcase, gleefully stupid, and Matlock is the current job, a slicker show than the name implies. Save The Tale for when you are ready: it is a serious film about memory and it asks him to play something extremely difficult, and he does not flinch from it. Freddy vs. Jason is there if you want the 2003 teen-horror version of him.