What Really Happened To Napoleon Dynamite Star Jon Heder?

In 2004, a year in which film comedy was otherwise dominated by flashy and expensive Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell movies like "Meet the Fockers," "Anchorman," and "Dodgeball," an unlikely hit emerged: "Napoleon Dynamite." Quirky, low-key, and low-budget, the meandering, episodic movie depicted the minor adventures of a self-aggrandizing teenage nerd living in a tiny, sleepy Idaho farm town. Teens and young adults especially loved "Napoleon Dynamite," and it launched its one-of-a-kind star to instant fame. Like the Napoleon Dynamite character, fledgling actor Jon Heder quickly became an icon of his generation.

In the 20 years since Heder put away the tetherball, his "Vote for Pedro" T-shirt, a lot of tater tots, and that Jamiroquai mixtape, he's built a solid resume across film, television, and the internet, while also living an interesting and singular life off-screen. What are we going to do today? Whatever we feel like doing — gosh! — which is to tell you what Jon Heder has been up to since the release of "Napoleon Dynamite."

Following the surprising commercial success and cultural impact of "Napoleon Dynamite" in 2004, the star of the quirky indie movie quickly became the hottest new comic actor in Hollywood. For the next few years, Jon Heder landed roles in some of the highest-profile comedies of the 2000s, most of which have faded from the collective consciousness. While Heder didn't earn much money from "Napoleon Dynamite," he certainly had some lucrative hits in store. 

In the 2005 romantic comedy "Just Like Heaven," he played an impish supernatural matchmaker opposite the sad and troubled Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon. That earned more than $100 million at the box office, and then came the misfits baseball comedy "The Benchwarmers" with David Spade in 2006, which racked up $65 million. In 2007, Heder and Will Ferrell's figure skating comedy "Blades of Glory" took in $145 million, making it the biggest financial hit ever in the career of the guy still best known for "Napoleon Dynamite."

It seemed like the presence of Heder could draw paying customers to movie theaters, except that all of those early, post-"Napoleon Dynamite" hits featured him in supporting roles. When filmmakers put the actor at the forefront, the critical and financial results were a mixed bag.

As the 2000s moved into the 2010s and "Napoleon Dynamite" moved ever farther into the past, the novelty of Jon Heder wore off in Hollywood a bit. His star dimmed somewhat too, thanks to a series of live-action movies that prominently featured the actor providing lackluster or woeful box office returns and poor critical reviews — if they even got any attention or a wide theatrical release in the first place.

The 2007 road trip comedy "Moving McAllister" earned $42,538 and a 10% Rotten Tomatoes score. In 2008, "Mama's Boy" skipped theaters entirely. In 2015, the artsy "Réalité" won critical praise but made just $413,137, while the holiday ensemble comedy "Christmas Eve" brought in a paltry $91,302 and garnered an imperfect 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Heder then played Roy Disney in the Walt Disney biopic "Walt Before Mickey" that didn't make it to the multiplex, while 2016's maligned supernatural comedy "Ghost Team" did and made just $6,245. Heder starred in the inspirational 2018 bowling dramedy "When Jeff Tried to Save the World," which picked up some awards at film festivals but ultimately never saw a major release.

While Jon Heder has for the most part been seen in fewer movies and by fewer people since his post-"Napoleon Dynamite" boom, he's found a super-successful niche as a voice actor. He's lent his signature raspy, Pacific Northwestern drawl to as many animated and computer-generated projects in recent years as he's acted in live-action TV series and films. 

Heder was part of the cast of the Best Animated Film Oscar-nominated "Monster House" and "Surf's Up," as well as the latter's sequel, and he voiced Seth in the Disney video game "Epic Mickey 2." He's also worked in a lot of lower-budget, often overseas-produced direct-to-video fare like "Legend of Kung Fu Rabbit," two different "Pinocchio" films, "A Mouse Tale," "The Little Penguin Pororo's Racing Adventure," "Pororo 5: Treasure Island Adventure," "Beyond Beyond," "My Sweet Monster," and "A Monstrous Holiday." 

Fans may have also spotted Heder's highly recognizable voice in episodes of popular cable TV animated series for children, such as "Clarence," "Uncle Grandpa," "Ben 10: Omniverse," "Star vs. the Forces of Evil," and "The Legend of Korra." His longest-running work of any kind came via the Disney XD cartoon "Pickle and Peanut." For three years, Heder voiced an anthropomorphic pickle named Pickle.

The upward trajectory of Jon Heder's acting career in the late 2000s and early 2010s coincided with the rise of a new format of narrative entertainment: the scripted web series. Made available for viewing via YouTube, other lesser-known video hosting sites, or comedy-centric websites, web series tended to consist of short and serialized episodes. For a time, Heder thrived in this area with shows that attracted small but devoted followings before vanishing into the void of cyberspace.

In 2009, Heder starred on 22 truncated episodes of the horror comedy "Woke Up Dead" as a guy trying to piece together how he became a zombie. Next, Heder showed up as Jon for eight installments of the Samsung sponsored and distributed procedural parody "FCU: Fact Checkers Unit." The actor also starred in "Critical Role," for Twitch, an improv comedy show based on the historically controversial "Dungeons and Dragons" role-playing game, and provided mock-fancy hosting segments for "Dead Grandma," a web series about an undead matchmaking matriarch starring Heder's brother, Matt Heder.

Jon Heder never appeared in any massive, global blockbusters nor in multi-Oscar winning classics, acting primarily in independent movies and moderately successful comedies. His absence from the A-list may be due in large part to personal preference. In the wake of "Napoleon Dynamite," Heder entertained a number of big movie deals. "I did get a lot of offers, especially back then, of stuff that I'm not comfortable with," he told Vulture in 2012. "A lot of the projects just seemed too raunchy. Quite honestly, a lot of it was that: the raunch factor. I've never been interested in doing those kinds of projects."

Heder was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, and he remained an adherent into adulthood. One part of Heder's faith is a devotion to a substance-free and healthy lifestyle, and so is the encouragement to raise big families. Heder met his future wife Kirsten Bales while studying at Brigham Young University in Utah, and they got married in 2002. The actor stays plenty busy helping raise their four children: Evan (born in 2007), Philip (born in 2009), Timothy (2014), and a daughter born in 2016.

Over the past several years, Jon Heder scaled back on his film and television work due to a lack of proximity to the entertainment industry. He's no longer inundated by work or work offers, because he and his family moved out of Southern California and into Washington state. It felt like the best decision he could make to achieve some semblance of work-life balance and escape an inhospitable climate. "It is weird because I always wanted to work in Hollywood, I wanted to make movies," Heder told the "Inside of You" podcast in 2022. "I love Hollywood for sure, but I think after a while, we were just, 'It's hot here. It's so hot.' I love the Pacific Northwest, having grown up there, so that's why we moved back."

And despite his initial successes as an actor in big studio comedies in the 2000s, Heder never quite felt like he belonged in the show business mainstream. "No matter where I go, I'm discovering I'm constantly an outsider," he said. Heder grew up in Oregon, attended college in Utah, and pursued the actor's life in Hollywood only after "Napoleon Dynamite" hit big.

In 2012, Jon Heder nearly moved up a level with two very promising television projects. But neither show, an animated series and a live-action sitcom, brought lasting mainstream TV success for the actor. One of the weirdest movies to be turned into a kids' cartoon was "Napoleon Dynamite," with the animated adaptation debuting on Fox in January 2012. Most of the original cast reprised their roles from the eight-year-old movie, including Heder. With a necessary change in tone to be more fast-paced to justify animation requirements, "Napoleon Dynamite" failed to connect with viewers, and Fox canceled the critically-panned and little-watched show after airing just six episodes.

Also in 2012, Heder starred in a pilot episode for a potentially ongoing TV series called "Gulliver Quinn." Heder played the title character, a man in his late twenties who enrolls in junior high school to pick up where he left off when he dropped out to join his parents on a scientific expedition. It wasn't purchased by any network, and "Gulliver Quinn" died after that single installment.

Unlike most every other unique comedy film ever made, "Napoleon Dynamite" never spawned a full-length theatrical sequel. But Jon Heder knows that fans want to see him play his first big role as often as possible, and he's obliged with a series of cameos and re-creations. He appeared in-character as Napoleon Dynamite on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," and he participated in self-parodies on "Robot Chicken" (voicing Napoleon Bonamite) and Nickelodeon's 2010s "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" reboot (as Napoleon Dynafrog).

Heder and Efren Ramirez reprised their movie roles (Napoleon and Pedro) in a series of ads for the 150th anniversary edition of the Utah State Fair. And when Burger King introduced cheese-stuffed tater tots to its menu in 2016, it called upon the movie's biggest proponent of the side dish for a set of indie film-like commercials. Heder and Ramirez portrayed two guys falling somewhere between themselves and their movie characters from a decade earlier as they praised Burger King's tots. Heder would once again extol the virtues of fried potato nuggets, while portraying Napoleon in a 2024 ad for tater tots manufacturer Ore-Ida.

Despite his many voice acting commitments and not living anywhere near Los Angeles, Jon Heder still makes time for small and supporting roles in television shows and movies. For example, he appeared in two episodes of the kid show "The Aquabats! RadVentures!" and one episode of the police comedy "Swedish Dicks." In 2020, Heder headlined "Tremors: Shrieker Island," the seventh and so-far final installment in the long-running sci-fi comedy franchise. Other movies include the 2021 Thanksgiving-set rom-com "Funny Thing About Love," and the 2018 family fantasy "Unexpected Race."

Heder also endured the misfortune of starring in many long-ago completed but never released and thus never seen projects. This includes a TV pilot with Mark Hamill about the relatives of superheroes called "Relatively Super," the horror movie "I See the Demon," and the Richard Dreyfuss dark comedy "Killing Winston Jones."

Jon Heder has laid low in recent years. He moved far away from the entertainment industry's Los Angeles headquarters, and hasn't acted in a theatrical movie since the modestly released indie "The Tiger Hunter" in 2017, focusing mostly on voice roles in low-profile projects. But he might be gearing up for another shot. In 2024, Heder participated in a series of projects that harken back to his most successful career era of the mid-2000s.

After screening "Napoleon Dynamite" at the Sundance Film Festival in February 2024, fans got to see what the "Napoleon Dynamite" cast looks like today, when Heder joined erstwhile co-stars Efren Ramirez (Pedro) and Jon Gries (Uncle Rico) for a 20th anniversary road show of their film. They toured theaters around the U.S. to play the movie and engage in audience Q&A sessions, games of tetherball, and dance-offs. 

Later in the year, "Thelma the Unicorn" hit Netflix. A goofy animated musical comedy, it marked the reunion of Heder (he voiced a llama named Reggie) with Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess, the writer-director and co-writer of "Napoleon Dynamite," respectively. And in the fall of 2024, "Plan B" hit video-on-demand services. The first Heder romantic comedy in more than a decade, the actor plays a nerd who gets his neighbor accidentally pregnant after a one night stand. He's also part of the cast of Billy Zane's "Waltzing with Brando," about the ahead of his time actor Marlon Brando.