Jonathan Majors Says Seeing Heath Ledger's Joker Was a Huge Inspiration as an Actor and Young Man

Jonathan Majors has taken Hollywood by storm. The actor has starred in fantastic projects like Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, HBO’s Lovecraft Country, this year’s buzzed about dramas Magazine Dreams and Creed III, and this month’s return to his Marvel role of Kang the Conqueror, first revealed in the series Loki, and now heading into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as well as upcoming MCU projects Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.

Majors has an intense screen presence and has chosen projects so far that have showcased his incredible range. One performance that he said inspired him at a young age was Heath Ledge’s Joker portrayal in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. He told Entertainment Weekly:

"Okay, first of all, he's gorgeous. He's got that f---ing jawline, and he didn't give a f---. He threw his body around. He was so full. And I went, 'I'm coming for that. I'm inspired.' It takes a lot, you feel me? To be inspired."

But it wasn't just Ledger's jawline that grabbed his attention. In December, Majors penned an essay celebrating the film for Variety, drawing particular attention to its complex portrayal of good and evil. "The Dark Knight etches so vividly the agnostic morality of survival and the discipline of goodness," he wrote. "Each step of our lives is moving us towards being the hero or villain of our tale."

Navigating that gray area between right and wrong is something with which Majors is intimately familiar.

"The way I grew up, the people I grew up around, drug dealers, killers, murderers, everybody was just coming out of jail. Everybody had an ankle monitor on. So I knew the complexity of the guys I grew up with. Yeah, you did do that, but you also did this. And what I saw in Heath, and in everything he did, was: It's this and that."

Not only did he see that duality in his neighbors, but he also lived through it himself. As a teenager, Majors was arrested for shoplifting and suspended from high school for fighting. He soon found himself kicked out of his home and living in his car, working two jobs to make ends meet. Not long after being inspired by Ledger's Joker, Majors found solace in theater and performing on stage. "Life is just… it's not enough," he says. "So you got to go into these worlds where you can just go, 'Here's everything,' at least for a little bit." After graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Majors went on to earn his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.      

Now, whether he's playing an ex-con out for revenge in Creed III, an intergalactic space tyrant in Quantumania, or an obsessive amateur bodybuilder with a volatile temper in Magazine Dreams, Majors hopes to inspire others in the way Ledger did for him. 

"I'm trying to give as many bastions of hope for those who were like me, man," he says. "We are extremely complex if we allow ourselves to be, and if you can be touched in certain places that you don't even know, you'll be better. If you can find a haven of comfort in being seen, that's helpful. If you can watch a film and be inspired to work out, great. Inspired to love somebody better, great. Inspired to be a better best friend, great. That's the business I'm in."

He’s such a cool and inspirational guy. I am sure he is sparking something in the minds of the young people watching him. He is captivating in all his roles, and I can’t wait to see what else he does with his career.