Faizon Love, the actor best known as the enormous elf in the toy testing room in Elf and as the consistently threatening Big Worm across the Friday franchise, was arrested in Hillsborough County, Florida on Tuesday and booked into Orient Road Jail in Tampa on two counts of contempt of court.
He is 58 years old. He turned 58 on June 14. The arrest came two days after his birthday.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office confirmed the charges, and court records reviewed by WTSP News in Tampa provided the specific violations.
A judge had issued an order directing that Love be brought into custody "to serve a 90-day sentence for indirect civil contempt of Court." Love failed to appear for a court hearing on April 8, 2026.
He failed to provide a full and complete financial affidavit and supporting documents the court had ordered him to produce.
He failed to surrender himself to jail when ordered to do so on May 1.
The charges are connected to an ongoing paternity case involving a woman named Tiffany Lee, identified as the mother of his child.
He is currently held at Orient Road Jail. TMZ reported the arrest and obtained his booking photo, which multiple outlets described as Love staring directly into the camera with the expression of someone who has made a series of decisions he is now reconsidering.
The Career These Roles Represent
Faizon Love was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1968, grew up in Newark, New Jersey and San Diego, California, and built a comedy career that moved from Def Comedy Jam appearances in the early 1990s through a run of film appearances across the late 1990s and 2000s that placed him in some of the most commercially successful comedies of that period.
His most recognizable credit to the widest audience is probably Elf, the 2003 Will Ferrell holiday comedy that has become one of the most reliably rebroadcast films in American Christmas television.
Love appears as the enormous elf who works in Santa's workshop and interacts with Buddy in the toy-testing scene, a brief but memorable role that has become the one most non-comedy fans associate with his name.
His most sustained franchise presence is the Friday films.
He played Big Worm across Friday and Next Friday, a character whose comedy derives entirely from the specific menace of a drug dealer who is persistently threatening to collect payment and just as persistently failed to collect it from Craig and Smokey.
Big Worm is funny precisely because he is genuinely dangerous and the people around him are genuinely trying to manage that danger, and Love played the balance correctly across both films.
Couples Retreat in 2009, the Vince Vaughn-directed comedy filmed largely in Bora Bora, gave him a more prominent role in a mainstream studio comedy.
Torque, Be Cool and a range of other films round out a career that has been consistent if not always high-profile.
The Separate Case That Is Still Pending
The Tampa contempt charges land on top of a significantly more serious pending matter in California.
In August 2024, Love was involved in an incident at a Sheraton hotel in San Diego's Mission Valley neighborhood that has since produced felony charges.
According to prosecutors, Love arrived at the hotel to check in and was told by the front desk that the property had no room available, despite a third-party booking he believed entitled him to a room.
He responded by allegedly ripping a credit card reader off the front desk and throwing it at the clerk who had delivered that news.
The device struck her in the head, broke her glasses and caused a concussion.
The hotel clerk testified at a preliminary hearing in July 2025 with the phrase that has since been widely quoted:
"Mr. Love was extremely upset. It was zero to 100 real quick."
A San Diego judge reviewed that testimony and the other evidence and found sufficient basis to send the case to trial.
Love was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon plus a great-bodily-injury enhancement, a combination that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
He pleaded not guilty. The trial was scheduled for January 2026. Its current status in light of the Florida contempt arrest has not been publicly updated as of Tuesday.
Love addressed the San Diego case in a VladTV interview around the time the trial date was set, saying he had not realized the charge had been upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony until he was already standing in court.
He said he had entered psychiatric treatment in preparation for trial.
The Prior History
The Tampa arrest is the third time Faizon Love has had significant contact with the criminal justice system as an adult.
The 2017 incident at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio began when Love was a passenger and escalated into a physical altercation with a valet worker that surveillance video captured and that prosecutors used in the resulting case.
Love said the valet had spat on him. He pleaded no contest to the assault charge, received a 180-day suspended sentence and paid a $500 fine.
The progression from a 2017 airport altercation to a 2024 hotel credit card reader incident to a 2026 contempt of court arrest in connection with a paternity case is not the trajectory anyone would have predicted from the man who played Big Worm. The Big Worm always collected eventually.