Jacob Tierney

Bio

Jacob Tierney has worked as a professional actor since the age of six and began his directorial career in 2002 with the comedic short film DAD, which he also wrote, produced and appeared in. DAD won the honourable mention for Best Short at the 2002 Atlantic and Austin Film Festivals, and screened at the CFC’s Worldwide Short Film Festival.

His feature debut TWIST, a modern take on Charles Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST, starred Nick Stahl and Gary Farmer and premiered at the Venice Film Festival. TWIST received Genie nominations for Jacob’s screenplay, as well as for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, and won the Genie for Best Original Song.  His second feature, the festival hit THE TROTSKY, won the 2011 Genie Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Song, and its star, Jay Baruchel, picked up the User’s Choice Award.  The film also won the audience award at the Tokyo Film Festival after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews. Jacob won both the writing and directing awards for film at the 2010 Canadian Comedy Awards, and Jay Baruchel, the film’s lead, won in the best performance by a male category.  Jacob also won the 2010 WGC Award for best feature film script.  THE TROTSKY was released in Canada (Alliance Films) and the US (Tribeca Films) in 2010. GOOD NEIGHBOURS (NOTRE DAME DE GRACE) is his third film, which premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Additionally, PREGGOLAND, written by and starring Sonja Bennett, premiered at TIFF 2014 and garnered Jacob a Director’s Guild of Canada nomination for  best director. He also co-wrote (with Xavier Dolan), The DEATH AND LIFE OF JOHN F. DONOVAN, starring Natalie Portman, Kit Harrington and Susan Sarandon, directed by Xavier Dolan.

In the television world, Jacob is best known for directing and co-showrunning all seasons of LETTERKENNY for Crave/Hulu as well as directing all episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 of its spinoff SHORESY, also for Crave/Hulu. Jacob shot the pilot of GAVIN”S WILD WEST, a half hour comedy created by and starring Gavin Crawford for the CBC and followed up with perennial episodes of Mr D, and finally the pilot for LEILAH AND JEN, for EOne and CBC. He directed the entire season 1 of THE GAME for YTV (all episodes) and Jacob is currently in development for a couple of television series as well as a feature.

Among many nominations and accolades, Jacob has received 2 Writers Guild of Canada Awards for Best TV Comedy, 4 Canadian Screen Awards for Best Directing in a Comedy Series and 4 Best Writing in a Comedy Series for his work on LETTERKENNY.

On the producing end, Jacob has served as a producer on several films (HE HATED PIGEONS, LOVESICK), and as executive producer on WAR PONY (directed by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2023), as well as the smash reality show THE TRAITORS: CANADA.

Jacob has recently co-founded Accent Aigu Entertainment with Brendan Brady and they have several shows and films in development.

Jacob is represented by Kishwar Iqbal at the Gary Goddard Agency, Trevor Rotenberg at Three Arts Entertainment and Matt Smith at CAA.