Long before he became one of Hollywood’s most respected attorneys, Jeff Cohen was just the funny, fearless kid the world knew as Chunk from The Goonies. With his Hawaiian shirt, his unforgettable Truffle Shuffle, and the kind of natural charm that couldn’t be taught, Jeff exploded onto the screen in a way few child actors ever do. But while the world laughed with him, very few understood the private upheaval shaping his childhood—his parents’ separation, the name he chose from his mother’s maiden line, the early audition rooms where the same few boys competed for every “funny fat kid” role. Filming The Goonies should’ve been the peak of his young career, yet behind the scenes, he was hiding chickenpox and pushing through fear, terrified he’d be replaced if anyone noticed. Even then, he was fighting to stay part of something bigger than himself.
But Hollywood has a way of turning on its youngest stars without warning. When puberty arrived, it didn’t just change Jeff physically—it erased every role he’d ever been considered for. Suddenly, the industry that once adored him no longer knew what to do with him. “Acting gave me up,” he later admitted, a sentence that quietly captures the heartbreak so many former child actors share. Instead of spiraling, Jeff did something extraordinary: he rebuilt himself from the inside out. He leaned into school, football, grit—and with the encouragement of director Richard Donner, who not only wrote him a college recommendation but secretly paid his tuition, Jeff discovered not just where he came from, but who he could become.
That journey led him far away from the lights of the soundstage and into the halls of UC Berkeley and UCLA, where he traded scripts for business textbooks and law briefs. And in one of the most poetic twists Hollywood has ever seen, the boy who once played Chunk came back to the entertainment world not as a performer, but as one of its most formidable protectors. As a founding partner of a major entertainment law firm, he built a career negotiating high-stakes deals for others—including, unbelievably, the Oscar-winning comeback role of his Goonies brother Ke Huy Quan. When Quan thanked him on the Academy Awards stage, it wasn’t just nostalgia. It was a salute to a friendship—and a transformation—decades in the making.
Today, Jeff Cohen stands as one of Hollywood’s rare success stories, not because he stayed famous, but because he grew resilient. His office walls hold tributes from Spielberg and Donner, reminders of where he started, but his legacy now stretches far beyond Chunk. He carved out a life of purpose, integrity, intelligence, and humor, proving that childhood fame doesn’t have to define or destroy a person. Jeff didn’t just escape the fate that claimed so many young stars—he rewrote the script entirely. And in doing so, he honored the boy he once was… while becoming the man no one expected but everyone admires.