For Jonathan Majors, it’s been a long journey from performing in Cedar Hill High School’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace in 2007.
Right now, Majors, 33, seems to be hitting a sweet spot in his career. This year alone, he is playing memorable characters in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III.
The two movies follow his role as Navy airman Jesse Brown in Devotion, which earned him a nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture in the NAACP Image Awards. The ceremony takes place Saturday.
Last year, he won the same NAACP award for his role in The Harder They Fall (2021). That year, he received his first Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for portraying Atticus “Tic” Freeman in Lovecraft Country.
In January, Majors was selected for the Rising Star award at the Texas Film Awards, which take place next Friday. On the same day Creed III comes out in theaters, he’ll receive the Rising Star award at the Texas Film Awards in Luck, Texas, the town best known as home to Willie Nelson ranch.
Here’s what we know about Majors and his advancing career:
He’ll soon play Dennis Rodman
Majors is set to play former NBA player Dennis Rodman in 48 Hours in Vegas, a Lionsgate production that follows the former South Oak Cliff High School legend on his infamous adventure in Las Vegas. Rodman, who won NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, also played for the Dallas Mavericks.
“He’s eclectic. He’s an open mind. He’s an open heart,” Majors told Variety. “And, selfishly, you want to play a role like that, because it’s gonna push you to that place.”
He grew up in the Dallas area
Majors was born in Lompoc, Calif., but has significant ties to the Dallas area. He lived as a young boy at the Little Creek Apartments in Cedar Hill. He attended Cedar Hill High where he participated in theater. He also attended Duncanville High School in 2008.
Majors talked about his boyhood during his Saturday Night Live monologue in 2021.
“Growing up, I’m a military brat. My father was in the Air Force, my mother’s a pastor, so hallelujah, and I moved around a lot,” he said. “I like to say I was born in California, raised in Texas, educated in North Carolina, roughed up in New York City, and then re-educated in New Haven, Conn. — which, I guess, is my roundabout way of saying, ‘Yeah, I went to Yale.’”
Majors said when he was 17, he was homeless, living in his car and working at both Red Lobster and Olive Garden.
“That experience taught me a lot — to work hard and if you trust the plan, great things can happen,” he said.
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He has fond memories of Cedar Hill
Majors told Texas Monthly in 2020 that Apartment E8 was “the best place.
“There was a creek that ran behind the apartment. I spent so much time in that creek,” he said. “When I was a boy, it felt like the creek would take you to the other side of the world. It was probably two miles in either direction.”
Majors was kicked out of high school in Cedar Hill after a fight, he told Texas Monthly. Later, he re-enrolled and a teacher introduced him to acting, which he went on to study in college.
“The one thing that was consistent from the age of 14 to that time was that I was in the theater,” Majors told The Hollywood Reporter. “I just wanted to be in the world and be a part of it. Institutions are tough for me. Hollywood is tough for me.”
He knows how to tell if a role is right for him
Majors told Texas Monthly that he considers what responsibility the character has in telling the story at hand.
“If you remove the role from the story, can you still tell the story properly? And if the answer is no, then I’m interested. From there, I look to see what the human characteristic of it is. What is the thing that everybody from every culture can connect to?” he said.
He carries his own coffee mug wherever he goes
Majors is always seen with a mug. He has four and brings one along when he’s on a talk show. Stephen Colbert finally asked him: What’s with the cup?
He said his mother feared for his safety in show business and told him: “Baby, just make sure you watch your cup.
“Now it means mind your cup — you’re a vessel,” he told Colbert. “Nobody can fill you up. Nobody can pour you out. You do that yourself,” he said. “Holding on to this is a reminder that even in this craziness that is happening, my self-esteem is my self-esteem. Nobody can big me up, as it were, or tear me down.”
He was inspired by Heath Ledger’s Joker
Majors penned an essay in Variety about how Heath Ledger’s character brought complexity to The Dark Knight.
The film asks what it is to be human, what it is to be alive and to participate fully in one’s own living, he wrote. “The Dark Knight etches so vividly the agnostic morality of survival and the discipline of goodness.”