How Jon Bernthal Became Hollywood's Most Dependable Bruiser
When Jon Bernthal was cast as a petty drug dealer in 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' Martin Scorsese's 2013 white-collar crime epic, the actor wasn't even supposed to have many lines. But Bernthal went into that film intending to take his shot. So he came in for a wordless B-roll scene in which the script had him lifting weights in a backyard, asked the second-unit director to mic him and riffed for 45 minutes. Scorsese wasn't there that day, but here's what he saw in the footage: a shirtless Bernthal curling dumbbells, tormenting some teenage boys with a baseball bat and peacocking his virility. 'Bring some of them chicks around here sometime,' he says. Then Bernthal makes a brilliant little decision about his tough guy's whereabouts. 'Hey, Ma, we got chicken or what?' he yells toward the house. 'Ma!' There was no 'Ma' in the script. No one even said he lived with his mother.
The role introduced Bernthal as an excellent character actor. Since then, he has become the guy who shows up onscreen unexpectedly, delivers the most memorable performance in a scene or two and then vanishes. This is perhaps why he's so often playing dead men in flashbacks. He's the dramatic center of gravity in FX's 'The Bear,' appearing just once or twice per season as the deceased family patriarch, and the tragic romantic in the 2017 Taylor Sheridan film 'Wind River.' Bernthal was so good in 'The Accountant,' an improbable 2016 Ben Affleck-led movie about an autistic accountant turned gunslinger, that the filmmakers made this year's sequel a two-hander.
Bernthal has had leading roles too, most notably in 'We Own This City,' the HBO miniseries about Baltimore police corruption in which the actor's performance was criminally overlooked. But for the most part, he has carved out a career of supporting roles. So it made perfect sense when he told me that one of his favorite movies is 'True Romance,' Tony Scott's 1993 adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's first script. Christian Slater may have been the lead, but it was the supporting characters played by Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt and Dennis Hopper who stole the film. 'There are so many people who are in it for a scene or two,' Bernthal said, 'but you could have made a movie about any one of those characters.'
We were having breakfast in Ojai, Calif., where Bernthal lives. The previous day, he returned from New York where he was promoting 'The Accountant 2.' Before that he was in Greece and Morocco, filming a role in 'The Odyssey' with Christopher Nolan, which is perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed on a dramatic actor these days. In front of him was a pile of egg whites, spinach, fruit and gluten-free toast. 'I'm like a gorilla,' he said. 'I eat a lot.'
Most actors, once they get lead roles, are advised to turn down anything smaller. But Bernthal is allergic to strategizing about how to become a leading man or listening to agents and managers who want to find him a 'star vehicle.' The only real mistake he made in his career, he told me, happened because he let that sort of thinking get in his head. But he has switched agents since then. He knows he has become the guy who everyone calls for a favor, but then again 'The Bear' was a favor. And that turned into one of the most rewarding experiences of Bernthal's career. The intensity he brought to the role won him an Emmy, and now he has even co-written an episode in the upcoming season. 'I can't imagine deciding what you're going to do in this super-tenuous field while being so dependent on some businessman's strategy,' he said. Image Jon Bernthal, right, with Jeremy Allen White and Abby Elliott in the 2023 episode of 'The Bear' that earned him an Emmy. Credit... Chuck Hodes/FX, via Everett Collection
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