Jonathan Majors

Jonathan Majors (born September 7, 1989, Lompoc, California, U.S.) is an American actor who was a rising star in Hollywood, known for his work in the HBO miniseries Lovecraft Country (2020) and the boxing drama Creed III (2023). He also was cast as the villain Kang the Conqueror in several Marvel projects, but the studio cut ties with Majors in December 2023, after he was found guilty of assaulting and harassing a former girlfriend.

Early life and education

Majors is one of three children born to Terri (née Anderson) and Winfred Majors. The future actor spent his early years on the Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) in Santa Barbara county, California, where his father was stationed. The family eventually relocated to Texas, where Majors claimed his father “just kind of disappeared one day” and did not reappear for 17 years. The resulting financial insecurity forced Majors’s mother to frequently move the family, though they eventually settled in the Dallas area. Despite the hardships, Majors’s mother managed to earn a master’s degree in divinity and become a pastor. Majors would later cite her spirituality as an important influence on his life.

While growing up, Majors frequently was in trouble. He fought in school and was occasionally suspended. He also was arrested for shoplifting, and at one point he was temporarily kicked out of the family home and ended up sleeping in his car. Amid the turmoil, however, theatre provided a “safe space” for Majors, and he committed himself to acting. His mother was supportive, and, after graduating from Duncanville High School in 2008, Majors attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 2012. He went on to earn an M.F.A. (2016) from the Yale School of Drama.

When We Rise and Da 5 Bloods

A year after graduating from Yale, Majors appeared in the TV miniseries When We Rise (2017), about the gay rights movement following the 1969 Stonewall riots. He was cast as Ken Jones, a gay naval officer who returns home from Vietnam to face both racism and homophobia; Michael K. Williams played the character at an older age. Also in 2017 Majors had a supporting role in Hostiles, a western set during the late 19th century. He portrayed a soldier escorting a dying Cheyenne chief to his home in Montana. The actor’s roles in 2018 include a drug dealer in White Boy Rick, a crime thriller starring Matthew McConaughey, and an academic in Out of the Blue, which was based on the crime novel Night Train (1997) by Martin Amis.

Majors had a breakout year in 2019. He appeared in several films, but it was his moving performance in the critically acclaimed drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco that garnered attention. Majors played Montgomery (Mont) Allen, a playwright dealing with both gang violence and gentrification in a rapidly changing city. The actor subsequently landed a role in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods (2020) without a formal audition. The widely praised movie centers on a group of Vietnam veterans who travel to the Southeast Asian country in order to retrieve the body of their squad leader. Majors played David, the son of one of the vets (played by Delroy Lindo). As research for the role, Majors spoke with his mother’s father, who had fought in the war.

Lovecraft County, Marvel, and Creed III

In 2020 Majors reached a wider audience with the lead role of Atticus Freeman in the HBO miniseries Lovecraft Country, a supernatural take on the struggles of Black Americans under Jim Crow in the 1950s. The actor’s momentum continued the following year with a starring turn as outlaw Nat Love in the Netflix film The Harder They Fall. Majors’s costars in the Black western included Regina King and Idris Elba. Also in 2021 Majors entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in several episodes of the Disney+ series Loki, which starred Tom Hiddleston.

With his profile swiftly rising, Majors began taking more leading roles on the big screen. In 2022 he starred in Devotion, an action drama about Korean War hero Jesse L. Brown, who was the first Black pilot in the U.S. Navy. The following year the actor appeared in several major roles. In Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Majors portrayed the villainous Kang the Conqueror. It was the third installment in the franchise, and the all-star cast included Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Later in 2023 Majors played Damian (“Diamond Dame”) Anderson in Creed III, a boxing drama in the Rocky franchise. The movie was directed by Michael B. Jordan, who also played the lead character, and it was a critical and commercial hit.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Legal issues and career struggles

Even as Majors’s career reached new heights, however, his personal reputation suffered in March 2023, when he was arrested during an alleged domestic dispute in New York City. He subsequently was arraigned on assault and harassment charges and pleaded not guilty. The U.S. Army pulled an ad campaign that featured the actor, and Disney later shelved Magazine Dreams, a possible Academy Award contender in which Majors starred as the amateur bodybuilder Killian Maddox. In December 2023 Majors was convicted of assault and harassment, and Marvel subsequently parted ways with the actor, who had been slated to star in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Some four months later Majors was sentenced to a yearlong counseling program.