Piven was born in Manhattan, New York, and grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. He was raised in a Jewish household.He graduated from Evanston Township High School, and attended Harand Theater Camp in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, as a teenager. He played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story there. In Illinois, he trained at Piven Theatre Workshop,founded by his parents, Byrne Piven and Joyce Piven, both of whom were actors and drama teachers. He also attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity He spent a semester at the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. He has appeared in a number of films with John Cusack, who is also from Evanston and is a fellow alumnus of the Piven Theatre Workshop (as are Cusack's sisters Joan and Ann). Piven and Cusack once shared an apartment and have been friends since high school.
