Jeremy Piven’s Turn in ‘The Performance’ Was Built On The Belief Of His Whole Family – Contenders Los Angeles

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For actor Jeremy Piven and his sister, filmmaker Shira Piven, their film The Performance wasn’t only a long-fought labor of love 15 years in the making, it was the fulfillment of a family legacy.

Appearing together on a panel for The Performance at Deadline’s Contenders Los Angeles event on Saturday, the siblings revealed that the project originated as a notion of their mother, Joyce Hiller Piven, after she read legendary playwright Arthur Miller’s short story about a Jewish American tap dancer tapped to perform in Germany on the eve of World War II. “My mother is a theater artist, director, actress, and loves reading, and she has stacks of The New Yorker in her apartment,” Shira explained. “She read this story in The New Yorker years ago … and she sent it to Jeremy first, and she said, ‘This is a role for you.’” RELATED: 2024-25 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More “I was blown away by it,” Jeremy recalled. “And my mom’s not very frivolous.

She runs lines with me to this day and is my acting teacher – gives me notes to this day. “Actors are very delusional – that’s our superpower – and I read this role and immediately thought it would be incredible to play this,” Jeremy continued. “Arthur Miller is so incredible, and it also just reveals so perfectly the absurdity of antisemitism in this beautiful way, in this story that’s so beautiful. “And I didn’t for a moment think, ‘Well, I don’t tap dance – I can’t play this role,’” said the actor. “I’ve been trying to get the money to produce it ever since, and it took me 15 years to make this film.

And each year that we couldn’t find the money, I got better at tap until I was ready to perform it, so divine timing.” RELATED: The 2025 Oscars: