Other notable roles include The Girl Next Door (2004), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Alpha Dog (2006), Speed Racer (2008), Milk (2008), Lone Survivor (2013), The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), The Chinese Widow (2017), An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

His mother, Margaret Esther (née Davenport), is a visual artist, teacher, and pop-up book designer, and his father, David Milton Hirsch, is an entrepreneur, manager, and film producer.

[2][3] He has an older sister, Jennifer, and was raised in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lived with his mother for several years.

He made his cinematic film debut for The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)[5] and next starred with Kevin Kline in The Emperor's Club (2002).

[6][7] In 2005, Hirsch starred in Catherine Hardwicke's film Lords of Dogtown (2005) about a group of skaters in the 1970s and their role in the birth of skateboard culture.

Hirsch played gay-rights activist Cleve Jones in Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk (2008).

[11] In 2012, Hirsch starred with Penélope Cruz in Venuto al Mondo, a film by Italian director Sergio Castellitto.

Hirsch starred in The Motel Life, co-starring Dakota Fanning and Stephen Dorff, directed by the Polsky brothers.

[12] In May 2018, Hirsch became the new voice for character James Lake Jr. in the Netflix original DreamWorks show Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia from Guillermo del Toro, replacing Anton Yelchin in its third season following his death.

[17][18] On February 12, 2015, Hirsch was charged with aggravated assault after attacking and strangling a female Paramount Pictures executive with his bare hands on January 25, 2015, at Tao Nightclub in Park City, Utah.