Jason Edward Mewes (born June 12, 1974) is an American television and film actor. He is known for playing foul-mouthed drug dealer Jay, the vocal half of Jay and Silent Bob, the recurring duo from the “View Askewniverse” films of Mewes' longtime friend, Kevin Smith (who plays Silent Bob).

Biography

Mewes was born to a heroin-addicted mother and an unknown father in Highlands, New Jersey, and was raised by his aunt through most of his childhood while his mother was in jail. When his mother was out of jail, she would usually steal credit cards from neighbors' mail boxes in order to fuel her habit. Mewes remembers that she used stolen money to buy him a bicycle for Christmas, one of the few Christmas gifts he remembers receiving. During a brief period when she worked as a drug dealer, she would send a young Mewes out on his bike to unwittingly deliver drugs to people she didn't trust enough to deliver them herself. When his mother wanted to go out for the evening, she would leave him and his sister at the homes of people she barely knew. These people would lock them in the closet; he would later develop claustrophobia.

Mewes met Smith as a teenager while both of them were students at Henry Hudson Regional High School in the late 1980s. He developed a notorious reputation in his hometown of Highlands, with rumors that he broke a window at a local pharmacy, or that he had won the lottery.