Nev Schulman Biography

Nev Schulman is an American producer, actor, photographer, and TV host. He is best known for the 2010 documentary film Catfish and the follow up TV series Catfish: The TV Show on MTV of which he is the host and executive producer.

Schulman was born in New York City. He has an older brother Ariel who is an actor and filmmaker. They are of German-Jewish, Russian-Jewish, and Romanian-Jewish descent.

Schulman started taking pictures and became involved with photography after having studied dance for five years. He attended Sarah Lawrence College, studying Photography and Dance from 2004 to 2006. On April 28, 2006, he was involved in an incident with a female student and expelled, Shulman claims he hit the woman in self-defense.

At age 19, he and his brother Ariel started a film and photography production company. In 2004, Schulman started photographing dance as he became involved with the contemporary ballet community in New York City. He is a founding member of the Young Leadership Committee for the youth organization, Leave Out Violence.

In 2010, Schulman became the subject of the documentary Catfish, filmed by Ariel and business partner Henry Joost, in which Schulman met and fell in love with a girl he met online. The premise followed Schulman on the journey of falling in love with a girl he meets on the Internet, but later finds out that she may not be exactly who she claimed to be.

In 2012, Schulman became the host and executive producer of the follow up show Catfish: The TV Show for MTV, with his filmmaking partner Max Joseph, where he introduces couples in real life who have fallen for each other online but have yet to meet.

Schulman has written a book, In Real Life: Love, Lies & Identity in the Digital Age (2014). In it he gives both personal history and observations gleaned from his work on Catfish.