Haley was born and raised in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles,[9] the son of Haven Earle "Bud" Haley, a radio show host/disc jockey and actor,[10][11] and Iris D. Douglas.
He played Moocher in Peter Yates's acclaimed 1979 film Breaking Away and later in the short-lived TV series of the same name. Throughout the 1970s, he often played tough, angry, pimply, long-haired misfits; although in his feature debut, the offbeat 1972 film The Outside Man, he played Eric, a boy so desperately lonely that he tries to impress the mob assassin holding him and his mother (Georgia Engel) hostage. Haley also shot a pilot for an American version of the popular British comedy The Young Ones titled Oh, No! Not THEM!. In 1974 he played Norm, a misfit kid, in the 12th episode of the Saturday morning children's show Shazam![12]
Haley's acting career went dormant during most of the 1990s and early 2000s, when he moved to San Antonio. He eventually turned to directing,[13] finding success as a producer and director of television commercials.[14]
Haley owns a production company, JEH Productions, in San Antonio. In 2008, he appeared in Semi-Pro and starred in Winged Creatures with Kate Beckinsale, Guy Pearce and Dakota Fanning.[17] He also stars in Zack Snyder's 2009 adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen as Rorschach, a masked vigilante working to find the identity of a costumed hero killer, a role which earned him praise from many reviewers.[18] The film also reunited him with Little Children co-star Patrick Wilson who played Nite Owl II, Rorschach's former partner. Also in 2010, Haley appeared in Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese,[19] as a patient of a hospital for the criminally insane.
Haley has dismissed rumors that he accompanied Johnny Depp to auditions for Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) to audition for the role Depp was eventually cast in.[23] Haley auditioned for the role of the film's antagonist, Freddy Krueger, but ended up losing out to Robert Englund for the 1984 version of the film.[2][unreliable source?]
Haley was a series regular on Human Target as Guerrero, an ally of the main character, Christopher Chance. The series premiered on January 17, 2010 on Fox,[24][25] and ran for two seasons before being cancelled in May 2011.
Haley's first marriage was to Sherry Vaughan in 1979. He has two children: a son, Christopher (born 1986), and a daughter, Olivia (born 1998), by his second wife, Jennifer Haley. He married his third wife, Amelia Cruz, in 2004 and they live in San Antonio.[28] Haley holds black belts in Kenpo and Taekwondo.[29]
^"Jackie Earle Haley (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved 8 February 2022. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
