James Roday Rodriguez (born James David Rodriguez; April 4, 1976) is an American actor, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for portraying Shawn Spencer, a hyper-observant consultant detective and fake psychic, in USA Network series Psych and the subsequent Psych film series. He also starred in A Million Little Things which debuted in 2018, playing Javier "Gary" Mendez.
Rodriguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, as James David Rodriguez. His father, James "Jim" Rodriguez, a retired Air Force master sergeant, is of Mexican descent. His mother, Deborah Collins, has English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
He attended Taft High School in San Antonio and studied at NYU TISCH's Experimental Theatre Wing, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
At the age of 22, Rodriguez selected the professional name James Roday. In a July 2020 interview, he explained the decision was mainly driven by producers and casting directors feeling his appearance clashed with his Latino family name. The characters he read for up until that point were not written with a Latino background in mind. In order to book his first job, he legally changed his middle name, David, to Roday (picked from an Anton Chekhov play he was starring in at the time), and omitted Rodriguez from his screen name. In the same interview, he stated regret that he "sold out [his] heritage in about 15 seconds."
Rodriguez announced in that interview that going forward, he would use his full legal name of James Roday Rodriguez.
Rodriguez first decided to make acting his fulltime career in high school, where he was part of the theatre department run by James Buchanan, who would later become co-founder of the Communications Arts High School. Rodriguez cites Buchanan as "the architect behind [his] love for art and the belief [he] could make a run at making it for a living". While at Taft, he became a UIL State Champion, being named best actor for his performance in the play The Elephant Man.
On Buchanan's advice, Rodriguez went on to study at NYU, where he starred in various theatrical productions, including Three Sisters, A Respectable Wedding, and Severity's Mistress.
In 1999, Rodriguez co-produced a production of Henry V at the Mazer Theatre in New York City, starring Brad Raider whom he had attended NYU with. Afterward, the two friends founded Red Dog Squadron, a non-profit, Los Angeles-based theater company, both acting as co-artistic directors. With his company, Rodriguez produced several plays, the most recent of which was CAL IN CAMO in 2018. In addition to his producing capacity, he took on leading roles in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Extinction (which had runs in both Los Angeles and off-Broadway in New York), wrote and directed the one-act play Sustenance, and directed the play Greedy.
In December 2016, Rodriguez starred in the New York production of White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour.
Rodriguez is a member of the board of trustees at the Legacy Theatre in Branford, Connecticut, which was co-foundeed by Keely Baisden Knudsen, a fellow NYU graduate.
For the Legacy Theatre, Rodriguez produced the world premiere of Laurence Davis's play Masters of Puppets in 2023. In 2024, Rodriguez and Baisden Knudsen co-starred in a performance of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. In 2025, Rodriguez led a sold-out run of âÂÂthe funniest farce ever written,â Noises Off.
Rodriguez's big screen debut was in the 1999 film Coming Soon alongside Gaby Hoffmann, Bonnie Root, Ryan Reynolds and Ashton Kutcher.
Other early film credits include the 2003 film Rolling Kansas and the 2005 film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard.
Rodriguez's early television credits include starring roles in 2001's First Years and NBC's Miss Match in 2003.
Behind the scenes, he and high school friend/writing partner Todd Harthan wrote a sequel script to April Fools Day, which "gained momentum" but was never produced. Together with James DeMonaco, Rodriguez and Harthan went on to write the screenplay for the 2006 film Skinwalkers and also worked on an unused script for the film adaptation of the video game Driver.
Rodriguez's big break came on July 7, 2006, with the series premiere of USA Network's original series Psych. Airing following the season premiere of USA's other comedic success, Monk, it was the highest-rated scripted basic cable TV show premiere of 2006. Psych ran for eight seasons until 2014.
In 2017, Rodriguez returned to his most famous role in ', which he also executive produced and co-wrote with Psychs series creator Steve Franks. It aired on USA Network in December 2017.
A sequel, ', debuted July 15, 2020 on NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock. It was the first project crediting him as James Roday Rodriguez. ' was released on Peacock on November 18, 2021. On both projects, he once again served as co-writer and executive producer.
As of May 2023, the script for a fourth Psych movie is done but has not been greenlit yet.
After Psych the series ended, Rodriguez starred in various pilots and independent films, most notably Pushing Dead by independent filmmaker Tom E. Brown, which accumulated a number of awards at film festivals in the US and elsewhere.
In 2018, Rodriguez returned to network television, starring as Gary Mendez on ABC's dramedy A Million Little Things, which ran for 5 seasons. He co-wrote the series' final episode, "One Big Thing", with series creator DJ Nash.
Rodriguez branched out into voice acting in the 2021 animated feature Night of the Animated Dead, an adaptation of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Since Psych, Rodriguez has spent more time behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. He directed episodes for Battle Creek, Rush Hour, Rosewood, Blood Drive, The Resident, The Crossover and High Potential. He also developed, wrote, and directed the pilots Shoot the Moon for USA and Quest for Truth for E!.
Rodriguez released his first feature directorial debut, Gravy, in 2015, co-written by him and Todd Harthan. He co-wrote (once again with Todd Harthan) and directed his second film Treehouse as part of Hulu's monthly horror movie anthology Into the Dark, which aired in March 2019.
Rodriguez and Harthan most recently co-wrote the first movie in a planned trilogy, The Rule Of Three, based on a novel by the same name written by Sam Ripley. Filming started in January 2026, with an as of yet unknown release date.
in 2025, Rodriguez published his first short story titled "The Long Straw" in the fantasy and horror anthology magazine Weird Tales, issue #371.
Rodriguez dated his Psych co-star Maggie Lawson throughout most of the series run. They broke up in 2013 before the final season aired, for undisclosed reasons.