Jacob Tremblay: Room, Wonder and Walnut Grove Secondary

In February 2016, a few weeks after he’d won a Critics’ Choice award in Los Angeles, a nine-year-old from Langley sat down at the Chief Sepass Theatre in Fort Langley to answer questions after a 3:30 screening of Room. The Langley International Film Festival had booked Jacob Tremblay for a hometown Q&A, and the Advance Times ran the notice with the ticket number for the school district foundation.

That’s the Langley side of Jacob Tremblay: a kid who became famous very young and kept going to school here. The Canadian Encyclopedia says he was born in Vancouver and raised mainly in Langley, and quotes him saying he still went to public school. In June 2024 he posted his graduation photos with a caption to the “WGSS Class of 2024,” Walnut Grove Secondary, and Entertainment Weekly picked it up under the headline “Wanna feel old?”

The career so far

• 2013. First notable role, at five, as Blue in The Smurfs 2.
• 2015. Room, opposite Brie Larson, filmed in Toronto in 2014. He plays Jack, the five-year-old at the heart of the story, and collects about 20 awards, including the National Board of Review’s breakthrough prize and the Critics’ Choice award for best young actor.
• 2016. Canadian Screen Award for performance by an actor in a leading role, for Room.
• 2017. The Book of Henry with Naomi Watts, and Wonder with Julia Roberts.
• 2021. Voices Luca in Pixar’s Luca, which earns him a Voice Arts Award.
• 2023. Voices Flounder in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and appears in Queen of Bones with Martin Freeman.

Wikipedia also lists Before I Wake and Good Boys among his leading roles.

Where to follow

For more Langley actors and artists, see actors, artists and writers from Langley, and for the school where he grew up, our Walnut Grove guide.