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Aaron Ruell

Aaron Ruell has built a screen career that extends well beyond acting. Born on June 23, 1976, in Fresno, California, he was raised in a Mormon family in nearby Clovis. After graduating from Clovis West High School, he studied film at Brigham Young University—a path that points toward the varied work he would later pursue as an actor, photographer and director. For movie audiences, Ruell is best known as Kipland Dynamite in Napoleon Dynamite. The role remains his defining acting credit, but it represents only one part of a career shaped by work on both sides of the camera. In 2007, he starred in On the Road with Judas, which premiered in the Dramatic Competition section of that year’s Sundance Film Festival. Ruell played a successful New York businessman living a second life as a computer thief. Ruell’s filmmaking work has followed its own substantial course. He wrote and directed the short films Everything’s Gone Green and Mary, both of which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He was the only filmmaker to have two films premiere there that year. His directing also moved into advertising, where he has made commercials for clients including T-Mobile, Nintendo, Coke and Burger King. Shoot magazine named him one of advertising’s most promising new directors in 2009, while Creativity identified him as an emerging director to know. He is represented as a director by Sanctuary in Los Angeles. That combination of acting, photography and directing gives Ruell an unusual career shape. He may be most immediately recognized for Kip, but his wider body of work shows a filmmaker and image-maker whose interests have never been confined to appearing in front of the camera.