If you watched The Goonies in the ’80s, you remember Chunk: the Hawaiian-shirt kid who made the Truffle Shuffle famous and spilled his guts—literally and figuratively—to a room full of criminals. What you probably don’t know is that the boy behind that belly laugh grew up, slimmed down, and became one of Hollywood’s most powerful entertainment attorneys. Jeff Cohen didn’t just leave the spotlight; he stepped behind the curtain and started cutting the deals.
Born Jeffrey Bertan McMahon in 1974, Cohen grew up in Los Angeles, the perfect place for a kid who loved to talk. After his parents split, he took his mom’s maiden name and started auditioning. By eight he was explaining riddles on the game show Child’s Play, and by ten he landed the role that would define his childhood. Covered in real chickenpox during filming (he hid the spots so he wouldn’t be replaced), Cohen improvised the Truffle Shuffle on the spot and cemented Chunk in pop-culture history. Director Richard Donner later said the kid’s energy was “unteachable—he just was Chunk.”
Then puberty hit. The baby fat melted, the roles dried up, and Hollywood basically told him, “Thanks for the memories.” Cohen calls it a “forced retirement.” He didn’t walk away from acting, he says—acting walked away from him. So he did what any sensible rejected teen would do: joined the Berkeley football team, learned to take a hit, and discovered he liked business more than blocking drills. Donner, impressed by the turnaround, wrote a college recommendation so glowing it came with a check big enough to cover tuition. Tough love, Cohen calls it. “You’re not going to be an actor,” Donner barked. “Learn the business.” He did—first at Berkeley, then at UCLA Law.
These days Cohen’s office looks more like a fan cave than a law firm. Spielberg signed an E.T. poster: “To Jeff (Chunk) Cohen, you are my favorite Goonie.” Donner’s Superman poster reads, “My man, with you anyone can fly.” Clients love the story—who wouldn’t want the guy who outwitted the Fratellis negotiating their contract? Cohen & Gardner LLP, the firm he co-founded, landed him on Variety’s Dealmakers List and THR’s Next Gen Executives. The poetic cherry on top: he negotiated the deal that brought fellow Goonie Ke Huy Quan back to the screen in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the role that won Quan an Oscar. When Quan thanked “my Goonies brother for life” onstage, Cohen was in the wings, tears in his eyes, legal brief stuffed in his tux pocket.
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He still gets asked to do the Truffle Shuffle at weddings and football games. The answer is always the same: “Three martinis and the right lighting.” But he doesn’t mind the request. That chubby kid with the big mouth taught him how to own a room, how to read a crowd, how to turn a moment into memory. These days he uses those skills to close million-dollar deals instead of escape pirate caves, but the spirit is identical—fast talk, big heart, and the certainty that the next adventure is always around the corner.
Cohen likes to say he’s the rare child star who escaped unscathed: no mug shots, no bankruptcy, no reality-show meltdown. Just a business degree, a law license, and a quiet pride every time he passes a Goonies T-shirt in an airport shop. Success, he figures, isn’t staying famous forever—it’s taking the best part of what people loved and building something useful with it. Chunk made the world laugh. Jeff Cohen makes sure the people who create new laughter get paid, protected, and respected. Same energy, different stage.
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