Jaeden Martell (born 2003) is the American actor who played Bill Denbrough in It and It Chapter Two, first credited as Jaeden Lieberher.
Quick Specs
| Born | Jaeden Lieberher, January 4, 2003, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Name | switched his credit name to his mother’s surname, Martell, in 2019 |
| First major role | Oliver Bronstein in St. Vincent (2014), opposite Bill Murray |
| Horror | Bill Denbrough in It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019); Aidan Hall in The Lodge (2019); Craig Poole in Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022); Joseph in Arcadian (2024) |
| Also | Alton Meyer in Midnight Special (2016); Jacob Thrombey in Knives Out (2019); Jacob Barber in Defending Jacob (2020) |
| Producer | Our Hero, Balthazar (2025), in which he also plays the title role |
| Awards | Critics’ Choice nomination for Best Young Performer (St. Vincent); MTV Movie and TV Award for Best On-Screen Team with the It cast (2018) |
Who He Is
Jaeden Martell was born Jaeden Lieberher in Philadelphia on January 4, 2003, the son of Wes Lieberher, an executive chef now based in Los Angeles, and Angela Teresa Martell. His maternal grandmother, Chisun Martell, is Korean. He grew up in South Philadelphia until he was eight, when the family moved to Los Angeles in 2011.
He started in commercials, a Hot Wheels spot first, then ads for Google, Moneysupermarket.com, Liberty Mutual, Verizon Fios, General Electric and Hyundai, including a 2013 Super Bowl commercial. For the first six years of his screen career he was credited almost exclusively as Jaeden Lieberher.
In 2019, at 16, he switched to his mother’s surname, Martell. He explained it himself, in April 2020: “That is my mom’s last name and I wanted to honor her because she is here with me every day that she’s on set with me and she makes me the person I am. I owe everything to her and she has raised me the last 17 years.” So the early films, St. Vincent, Midnight Special, The Book of Henry and It, were made and first released under the name Lieberher, and It Chapter Two and Knives Out, both 2019, straddle the change.
The Work, and What He Did in It
His first major film role was Oliver Bronstein in St. Vincent (2014), released when he was 11: the bullied latchkey kid who hires Bill Murray’s misanthropic neighbour, Vincent, as his babysitter, with Melissa McCarthy as his mother and Naomi Watts alongside. He carried the film’s emotional half, earned a Critics’ Choice nomination for Best Young Performer, and won youth-performance awards from the Las Vegas and Phoenix critics’ societies. Murray then recommended him to Cameron Crowe, who cast him as Mitchell Woodside in Aloha (2015). He played Johnny Masters in Masters of Sex (2015 to 2016), Anthony opposite Clive Owen in The Confirmation (2016), and, in Jeff Nichols’s science-fiction film Midnight Special (2016), Alton Meyer, a boy with extraordinary powers on the run with his father (Michael Shannon) from the government and a cult. The Book of Henry (2017) gave him a title role; the film was panned, but his notices were good.
The breakthrough was It (2017), Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. He plays Bill Denbrough, leader of the Losers’ Club, whose little brother Georgie is taken by Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) in the opening scenes. Bill is the club’s leader and its grief engine, and he anchored an ensemble of seven young actors as first among equals, running the performance on guilt and resolve rather than set-piece terror. He built Bill’s stutter as character rather than gimmick. Martell has said he prepared by studying examples on YouTube and Colin Firth’s performance in The King’s Speech, working on particular sounds and syllables. He was 13 during the summer 2016 shoot and 14 when the film opened on September 8, 2017. It grossed more than $701 million worldwide, a landmark for horror at the time, and the young cast won Best On-Screen Team at the 2018 MTV Movie and TV Awards.
In It Chapter Two (2019) he reprised Bill, credited as Young Bill Denbrough, in newly staged flashback sequences intercut with the adult Losers, in an adult cast that included James McAvoy as adult Bill, Jessica Chastain as the grown Beverly, and Bill Hader as adult Richie. The sequel grossed more than $473 million worldwide. The same year brought a second horror lead, Aidan Hall in Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s The Lodge (2019), one of two children snowed in with their father’s fiancée (Riley Keough). He also played Peter in Low Tide (2019) and the title character, a boy with hypertrichosis, in The True Adventures of Wolfboy (2019). In Rian Johnson’s Knives Out (2019) he is Jacob Thrombey, the phone-scrolling, trollish youngest of the Thrombey clan, the family’s politics summed up in a few sharp scenes, in an ensemble led by Daniel Craig, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.
Defending Jacob (2020), Apple TV+’s eight-part adaptation of William Landay’s novel, made him a co-lead. He joined the cast in March 2019, already credited as Martell, as Jacob Barber, a 14-year-old accused of murdering a classmate, with Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery as his parents. The series only works if the audience can never settle whether Jacob is innocent, and reviews singled out exactly that unreadable quality. He was 17 when it premiered on April 24, 2020, and gave his name-change interview during that press cycle. He then played Kevin Schlieb in Netflix’s metal comedy Metal Lords (2022).
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022) took him back to Stephen King. John Lee Hancock wrote and directed it for Netflix and Blumhouse from the novella in If It Bleeds, and it was released on October 5, 2022, when Martell was 19. He is Craig Poole, a small-town teenager who reads to the reclusive billionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), gives him an iPhone, slips the phone into his coffin at the funeral, and then starts receiving replies. He carries the film as its only young lead opposite a screen legend, in a register of grief and guilt rather than jump-scares.
In Arcadian (2024), a post-apocalyptic creature feature released on April 12, 2024, after a SXSW premiere, Nicolas Cage plays Paul, father of twins: Martell is Joseph, the bookish one who studies the creatures’ patterns, and Maxwell Jenkins is Thomas. He led A24’s disaster comedy Y2K (2024), directed by Kyle Mooney, as Eli, with Rachel Zegler and Julian Dennison. In Oscar Boyson’s debut, Our Hero, Balthazar, he plays the title role, a wealthy New York teenager whose performative online grief entangles him with a possible school shooter, and he is a producer on the film as well. It premiered at Tribeca on June 8, 2025, when he was 22, and was released on March 27, 2026.
He has since been cast, in a role the trade announcements left undisclosed, in Netflix’s The Boy in the Iron Box, adapted from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s novella, produced by del Toro and directed by David Prior, alongside Rupert Friend and Kevin Durand. It filmed in Toronto from October 20, 2025, to January 13, 2026, and no release date has been announced.
Cool Verified Facts
- His filmography splits visibly at a surname change: Lieberher through It, Martell from 2019. He renamed himself, on the record, for his mother, at 16, between the two halves of a blockbuster.
- Bill Murray’s recommendation to Cameron Crowe after St. Vincent is the best-documented seal of approval of his early career.
- He worked with Chris Evans twice in quick succession: in the Knives Out ensemble, then as Evans’s son in Defending Jacob.
- In September 2021 he played a live-action Morty Smith, opposite Christopher Lloyd’s Rick, in promotional interstitials for the Rick and Morty season-five finale.
- He has played the lead in two Stephen King adaptations five years apart, It as a child and Mr. Harrigan’s Phone as a young adult.
Signatures, Habits and Behind the Scenes
Restraint is the Martell method. The through-line of his work is withheld certainty played at close range: Bill’s grief held behind a stutter, Jacob Barber’s unreadability, Craig’s guilt, Joseph studying the creatures instead of shooting at them. He described Joseph in terms that fit the whole run: he “can’t just kill them all and stab his way through life. He must step back and think.”
He explained the name change once, clearly, and has not dressed it up since. His stated reason is honouring his mother, and that is the whole story.
The producer credit on Our Hero, Balthazar is the first hard evidence of ambition behind the camera. It is a beginning, not yet a production career.
Why He Matters
For horror, Jaeden Martell is the leader of the Losers’ Club in the highest-grossing Stephen King adaptation of its era. It passed $700 million worldwide with a cast of unknown children, and his Bill is its emotional centre, proof that a horror blockbuster could run on a stutter and grief. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone then made him a King actor across two eras, and The Lodge and Arcadian kept him in the genre as he grew up.
He is also a child actor who has made the transition on the record rather than on nostalgia. The post-It filmography is a deliberate spread, Rian Johnson, Fiala and Franz, Apple prestige television, Blumhouse, A24, a Cage creature feature, a Tribeca satire and a producer credit, with no franchise trap. At 23 he is still mid-transition, and the adult career is still being written.