Age: 45
male
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (born February 17, 1981) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in 500 Days of Summer (2009) and 50/50 (2011). He is the founder of the online media platform HitRecord whose projects such as HitRecord on TV (2014–15) and Create Together (2020) won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Interactive Program. Born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family, Gordon-Levitt began his acting career as a child, appearing in the films A River Runs Through It (1992), Holy Matrimony (1994), and Angels in the Outfield (1994), which earned him a Young Artist Award and a Saturn Award nomination. He played the role of Tommy Solomon in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001) for which he received three nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. He had a supporting role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and voiced Jim Hawkins in the Disney animated Treasure Planet (2002) before taking a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but dropped out in 2004 to resume his acting career. Since returning to acting, Gordon-Levitt has starred in Manic (2001), Mysterious Skin (2004), Brick (2005), The Lookout (2007), The Brothers Bloom (2008), Miracle at St. Anna (2008), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), Inception (2010), Hesher (2010), Premium Rush (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Looper (2012), and Lincoln (2012). He portrayed Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed film The Walk (2015) and whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oliver Stone film Snowden (2016). In 2020, he starred in the legal drama The Trial of the Chicago 7, for which he won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 2013, he wrote and directed Don Jon, a comedy-drama film that was released to critical acclaim, earning him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. He previously directed and edited two short films, both of which were released in 2010: Morgan M. Morgansen's Date with Destiny and Morgan and Destiny's Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo. In 2021, he wrote, directed and starred in a comedy drama series Mr. Corman on Apple TV+.
In Kentucky, a family watches in confusion as a herd of cattle starts running past their home, on fire. A spaceship explodes before it returns to Mars, and hundreds of other Martian ships leave Mars and head towards Earth. President James Dale, along with his aides, addresses the United States concerning the historic event. The President's science aides set up a first contact meeting with the Martians in Pahrump, Nevada as President Dale watches the development on TV with his wife Marsha and his daughter Taffy. Using a translation machine, the Ambassador of Mars announces that they "come in peace". When a hippie releases a dove as a symbol of peace, the Ambassador shoots it before he and the other Martians slaughter most of the people at the event, including General Casey, news reporter Jason Stone, and Billy-Glenn Norris, before capturing chat-show host Nathalie Lake and her pet Chihuahua. Thinking that the Martians assumed that the dove was a symbol of war, President Dale tells Professor Donald Kessler to renegotiate with the Martians, whose Ambassador later requests to address the United States Congress. At this meeting, the Martians massacre most of Congress. Kessler begs the Martian Ambassador to stop, but is knocked unconscious and taken aboard their ship, where he is later shown with his body parts dismembered and his disembodied head remaining animated. General Decker tries to convince President Dale to retaliate with nuclear warfare, but the President refuses. After a failed attempt to assassinate President Dale in which a disguised Martian is killed, the Martians invade Earth in droves, starting with Washington, D.C. and quickly spreading around the globe. As they attack the White House, the Secret Service evacuates the President, but the First Lady is crushed to death by the Nancy Reagan chandelier and Taffy is separated from them during the chaos. After the President of France is assassinated by the Martians and the Martians have defaced a variety of world landmarks, the U.S. government attempts a nuclear attack on the Martian mother ship that night, but that proves futile and the Martians continue destroying Earth and its inhabitants. Eventually, the Martian Leader and his bodyguards breach the bunker where Dale has been taken, and the former reduces Decker to the size of an insect before killing him. The Martians kill everyone else in the bunker except for Dale, who makes an impassioned speech in an attempt to plea for peace and his life. The Martian Leader appears to be moved by the speech and deceptively appears to agree to a truce with Dale, but then uses a gadget disguised as a hand to kill him. As the Martians ravage Las Vegas, Byron Williams, a former world champion boxer, leads a small group of survivors consisting of Barbara Land, Tom Jones, a waitress named Cindy, and a lawyer to an airfield in the hopes of flying a small jet procured by Land to safety. They barely make it, losing the lawyer in the process, but discover a large group of Martians stationed there as they are preparing to take off, the Ambassador among them. Byron creates a diversion by challenging them to a fistfight. While he succeeds in killing the Ambassador, he is outnumbered and overwhelmed, but Tom, Barbara, and Cindy escape. Billy-Glenn's brother Richie discovers that the Martians' heads explode when they hear Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call" when he goes to rescue his grandmother, Florence. Richie and Florence then drive around town, using the song to kill Martians, and broadcast the song on a local radio station. Thereafter, armed forces broadcast the song around the globe, killing the Martian leader and most if not all of the other Martians. Nathalie and Kessler's disembodied heads kiss while the Martian spaceship they are on crashes into the ocean. In the aftermath, Richie and Florence are awarded the Medal of Honor by Taffy, presumably the only surviving member of the government. Byron, who survived the Martian brawl, arrives in D.C. to reunite with his former wife and their two sons as the devastation is being cleaned up. Barbara, Cindy, and Tom Jones emerge from a cave with some animals to see dozens of crashed Martian ships in Lake Tahoe.
