Jonathan Majors On How Heath Ledger’s Joker Has Inspired His Career

jonathan majors heath ledger

Marvel Studios/Warner Bros


If he somehow wasn’t alright, Jonatha Majors is set to become a major A-list star as his character of Kang the Conqueror is set to become the next Thanos-sized villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Having only been acting for a few years now — his first feature film role was in 2017’s Hostiles — Majors rise has been meteoric thanks to his combination of undeniable talent and brave choices.

According to the man himself, he’s been trying to model his career after the late, great Heath Ledger, whose work as the Joker in The Dark Knight has “inspired” him as a performer.

“First of all, he’s gorgeous,” Majors told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s got that fucking jawline, and he didn’t give a fuck. 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.”

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,” he explains. “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.” [via Entertainment Weekly]

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will hit theaters next Friday, February 17. In addition to Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, the film stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, William Jackson Harper, Katy O’Brian, and Bill Murray.

Ant-Man isn’t Majors’ only film this year, as 2023 will also see him star in Magazine Dreams and opposite Michael B. Jordan as the primary antagonist in Creed III.

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