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This actor from New Jersey is best known as the vocal half of the onscreen comedy duo of Jay and Silent Bob, immortalized by Kevin Smith's independent classic Clerks (1994). Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), an idiosyncratic pair of suburban drug dealers, provide brief comic moments throughout Clerks, and Jay's ramblings are interrupted only by a rare moment of wisdom from Silent Bob. Although Smith's films do not share an ongoing story, they all occur in the same continuity, with Jay and Silent Bob as the one constant fixture. The criminal background of Jay and Silent Bob was toned down for the studio-produced Mallrats (1995), and the pair was played more for slapstick laughs. Mewes made a rare appearance as a character other than Jay in the film Drawing Flies (1996), an independent backed by Kevin Smith's View Askew Productions; he would reprise the role of Jay in the indie hit Chasing Amy. Jay and Silent Bob also appear in a series of comedic short films, directed by Smith, that were aired on MTV in 1998 and are featured extensively in Smith's action-oriented religious satire, Dogma (1999). In 2001 the dynamic duo of humor re-teamed, this time for their very own feature film, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.