James Rolfe Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Height, Net Worth, Fast Facts

Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s, and has created more than 270 videos throughout his career. His career as an online celebrity took off in 2004 with the beginning of Angry Video Game Nerd.^[8] Two years later, Rolfe gained mainstream attention after one of his videos went viral upon being published on YouTube.^[9] In the interim, he filmed videos he created on his own and most of them have been released on his website, Cinemassacre.

Early life

Rolfe was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 10, 1980. He was raised in south New Jersey. His parents bought him an audio recorder as a Christmas present sometime in the early to mid-1980s. Later, he got a camera and took photographs of him and his friends play fighting. He was inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to create adventure stories. Rolfe also illustrated comic books, which he updated monthly. One such comic he created had a plot inspired by the video game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Rolfe started filming shorts in 1989 continuing this hobby into the mid 1990s. He used Mario Paint for a few of his early films. He eventually took classes for hand-drawn animation at a university.^[which?] His early films did not have scripts or rehearsal. However, once he started writing scripts, his friends gradually lost interest because of the pressure of trying to remember their lines, which left many of Rolfe’s films unfinished. He then tried his hand at action figures and puppets. The plot of The Giant Movie Director (1994) involved toys coming to life. Rolfe attended a special education school for seven-and-a-half years during his childhood. He reflected on his past, “In school, I had a rough time communicating. I went to special ed for seven-and-a-half years. I liked it, I had a good time. But socializing in general… I was a little awkward. Art always made me feel comfortable.”

Rolfe attended the University of the Arts and has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

Since his early teen years, Rolfe operated and ran an annual “haunted house” Halloween attraction out of his parents’ garage (the same garage was later used in building a graveyard for his horror comedy film The Deader, the Better and again used in his film/series pilot Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole), using a collection of several props and antiques that he later reused multiple times in his other films.

Personal life

Rolfe attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia from 1999 to 2004 and continued living there after graduation. He briefly relocated to Los Angeles while filming Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014) but returned to Philadelphia upon completion of the movie.

In 2004, Rolfe was involved in a car crash when a utility trailer came loose from its truck, flung out to the other part of the highway, and hit him head-on. Rolfe sustained no physical injuries from the crash, while his Saturn Ion, which he had bought just nine days prior, was wrecked. Later that year, Rolfe discussed his experience in a short movie, Mechanical Losses, which can be seen on YouTube.

Rolfe met April Chmura in July 2004; she was a cinematographer on the early Nerd episodes. They began dating shortly after and got married in November 2007. He announced at the premiere trailer for Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie in November 2012, that they were expecting their first child. In April 2013, she gave birth to a baby girl. Rolfe has not divulged details about his daughter except for a few photos and expressing thanks that his wife got past complications resulting during childbirth.

In November 2013, April posted an update on Rolfe’s Cinemassacre website that their daughter is continually seeking medical treatment due to unspecified complications. On April 13, 2016, Rolfe revealed what happened while announcing an auction of various Cinemassacre memorabilia to benefit Shriners Hospitals for Children. During birth, his daughter suffered nerve damage in one of her arms, and required many months of physical therapy to gain full use of it. Rolfe expressed gratitude to Shriners for all they did for his family during that time.

Rolfe’s second daughter was born on September 1, 2017. He is of Italian ancestry. Rolfe had a pet cat named Boo who occasionally appeared on the Angry Video Game Nerd. Boo died of cancer on April 27, 2020. Rolfe published his autobiography, A Movie Making Nerd, in 2022.