James Roday Rodriguez

James Roday Rodriguez is an American actor, director and screenwriter, born James David Rodriguez in San Antonio, Texas, on April 4, 1976. He studied in the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU Tisch and, with fellow student Brad Raider, founded the Los Angeles non-profit theater company Red Dog Squadron. His screen debut was the 1999 film Coming Soon, followed by early television roles in First Years and Miss Match. At 22 he took the professional name James Roday, and in 2020 he explained why he regretted dropping his family name and said he would use his full legal name from then on. He is best known as Shawn Spencer, a hyper-observant consultant detective and fake psychic, in the USA Network series Psych and the Psych films that followed it, and he later starred as Javier Mendez, called Gary, in A Million Little Things from 2018 to 2023.