Do we like Jack Black?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean record on people and the planet, plus years of charity work, with the evidence on trans issues specifically thin.
Thomas Jacob Black was born in Santa Monica in 1969 and went to UCLA, where he joined Tim Robbins' Actors Gang theatre troupe. Small film roles through the nineties led to High Fidelity, Shallow Hal and then School of Rock, which made him a star. In 1994 he co-founded the comedy-rock duo Tenacious D with Kyle Gass, and the pair won a Grammy in 2015 for a cover of Dio's Last in Line.
The messiest chapter was July 2024, and it wasn't his joke. At a Sydney show, bandmate Kyle Gass quipped about Donald Trump during his birthday, and the line drew heavy criticism online within hours. Black wrote that he was “blindsided” and wouldn't condone hate speech or political violence. He cancelled the rest of the tour and put the band's plans on hold.
Some fans reckon he threw his mate under the bus. In January 2026 Gass said he understood why Black stepped back and that the two had “hashed it out”. Gass also said he expects the band to return. In early April Black told TMZ there were no plans for a reunion, so it's still parked.
On the harm check, we found nothing nasty from him. Ahead of the 2022 midterms he teamed up with the nonpartisan group VoteRiders and told The Hill that a woman's right to choose and environmental protections were among the stakes. At his 2018 Walk of Fame ceremony he swore at Donald Trump, which his fans cheered and some online critics didn't. That's a political opinion, not harm. To be upfront, we didn't find a trans-specific statement from him, so the record there is thin rather than bad.
The company he keeps looks fine too. His biggest recent hit, A Minecraft Movie, topped $875 million worldwide by May 2025. He joked on a podcast that he reads every bad review and remembers the critics' names, which makes him sound more like a bloke with a thin skin than anything sinister. We found no lawsuits, allegations or misconduct claims against him from established outlets.
The good stuff is the less showy kind. He backed Red Nose Day's fight against child poverty and said meeting a boy in Uganda moved him. Searches also turned up fundraisers for children's hospice care and for SAG-AFTRA members, though we only read the Red Nose Day coverage in full.