Jimmy Shaw is an American actor of film, television and theatre. He was born in Los Angeles and raised in Northern coastal Massachusetts.

He went to New York on a journalism scholarship to The School of Visual Arts. It was there that a classmate asked him if he'd be interested in being his scene partner for an audition for Uta Hagen's class at HB Studios. The scene was Lyle Kessler's "Orphans" and Jimmy had no lines.