Jason Kent Bateman is an American actor, director and producer. He began acting on television in the early 1980s on Little House on the Prairie, Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family. In the 2000s, he became known for his role of Michael Bluth using deadpan comedy in the sitcom Arrested Development, for which he won a Golden Globe and a Satellite Award. Take a look below for 27 more fascinating and interesting facts about Jason Bateman.

1. Bateman was born in Rye, New York, and was 4 years old when his family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and later to California.

2. His mother, Victoria Elizabeth, was a flight attendant for Pan Am who was originally from Shrewsbury, United Kingdom.

3. His father, Kent Bateman, is an American actor, writer, and director of film and television, and the founder of a repertory stage in Hollywood.

4. His sister is Justine Bateman.

5. He also has three half-brothers.

6. Bateman never finished high school. In an interview with Wired Magazine, Bateman admitted that he never received his diploma due to not finishing his finals while filming Teen Wolf Too.

7. Bateman told Best Life magazine that they supported their parents with the paychecks they earned from their television shows; he also revealed that he was managed by his father until Bateman was 20 and dissolved the business relationship.

8. Bateman first appeared in a cereal commercial for Golden Grahams in 1980 and began his television career on Little House on the Prairie as James Cooper, an orphaned boy who, along with his sister, is adopted by the Ingalls family.

9. From 1982 to 1984, he was a supporting character on the television show Silver Spoons as Ricky Schroder’s “bad boy” best friend Derek Taylor.

10. He appeared in the Knight Rider third-season episode “Lost Knight” in 1984, and a number of other small television roles.

11. In 1984, in response to his popularity on Silver Spoons, the show’s producers gave Bateman his own starring role as Matthew Burton on the NBC sitcom It’s Your Move, from September 1984 to February 1985.

12. In 1987, he appeared with Burt Reynolds on the men’s team in the inaugural week of game show Win, Lose or Draw.

13. Bateman earned the status of teen idol in the mid-1980s for his television work, most notably as David Hogan on The Hogan Family (originally titled Valerie and later, Valerie’s Family, after Valerie Harper left the series).

14. He became the Directors Guild of America’s youngest-ever director when, aged 18, he helmed three episodes of The Hogan Family.

15. In 2003, Bateman was cast as Michael Bluth in the comedy series Arrested Development.

16. In 2010, Bateman and Arrested Development co-star Will Arnett created “DumbDumb Productions,” a production company focusing on digital content.

17. Their first video was “Prom Date,” the first in a series of “Dirty Shorts” for Orbit.

18. In 2012, Bateman returned to his role of Michael Bluth for the revival of Arrested Development along with the rest of the original cast.

19. In 1987, Bateman won the celebrity portion of the Long Beach Grand Prix.

20. Throughout the 1990s, he struggled with an addiction to alcohol and drugs; he stated in a 2009 interview that, “I’d worked so hard that by the time I was 20, I wanted to play hard. And I did that really well… it was like Risky Business for ten years”.

21. Bateman features in the video for the Mumford and Sons song “Hopeless Wanderer”.

22. Bateman married Amanda Anka, daughter of singer Paul Anka, on July 3, 2001. The couple has two daughters.

23. In late 2005, he had surgery to remove a benign polyp from his throat.

24. In 2017, Bateman returned to television as both actor and director in the Netflix drama Ozark, in which he plays a financial advisor who must relocate his family to Missouri in order to launder money for a Mexican drug cartel.

25. Bateman received praise for his acceptance speech after winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series for Ozark.

26. Bateman is an avid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

27. Bateman endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election.