Who Is The Most Famous Actor From Michigan? [Video]

Some pretty big names have emerged from the Mitten State over the years, from Tom Selleck, to the late great Robin Williams, to Taylor Lautner of 'Twilight' fame.

But who is the most famous actor according to the web site PrettyFamous? You'll recognize his face, but the name may escape you. He's one of those actors, that when you see him you'll go 'Oh, THAT GUY!!'

PrettyFamous recently determined the most famous actor from every state, and Michigan's winner is a familiar face that has been in a lot of movies, TV shows and even TV commercials over the years.

He recently had his street cred go up by winning the Oscar in 2015 for his role as the mean music teacher in the indie hit 'Whiplash'.

My favorite role of his was as the clueless CIA guy in the Coen Brothers weirdly wonderful 'Burn After Reading', although I also loved him as the lovable dad in 'Juno'.

Do you know his name?

It's J.K. Simmons.

J.K. was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, a suburb of Detroit, the son of a middle school music teacher and an administrator. They moved away when J.K was ten, and he wound up graduating from the University of Montana.

He's also known as the instructor for young insurance agents in the State Farm commercials.

So how did J.K. become our state's most famous actor? Here's the criterion PrettyFamous used:

To calculate a celebrity's “Actor Score,” we took a weighted average of the following:

• Number of awards they have been nominated for
• Total number of IMDb reviews for films and television shows they had roles in
• Recent interest, as determined by Wikipedia page views (specifically, from Feb. 20, 2016 through March 20, 2016)

These factors determined a score on a 1-100 scale, with 100 denoting the highest level of acting fame. In this list, some actors with surging interest will outrank more familiar names, due to the methodology’s emphasis on recent buzz. We broke tie scores with the raw number of recent Wikipedia page views.

Strangely, the web site chose Tim Allen, a long time Michigan resident and WMU grad as the most famous person from Colorado, even though he's long championed Michigan in the award winning Pure Michigan ads.