Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight inspired Jonathan Majors to go to drama school, and the rest is history

Lovecraft Country alum Jonathan Majors is now playing a comic book villain himself as Marvel's Kang the Conqueror

By Katie Chow  |  February 8, 2023 | 9:44pm
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Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight inspired Jonathan Majors to go to drama school, and the rest is history
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In 2008, a new era of comic book movies began with the releases of The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Now, as Jonathan Majors launches his big screen debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Devotion star has opened up about how Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance as the Joker sparked his own career.

“Okay, first of all, he’s gorgeous,” Majors tells Entertainment Weekly. “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.”

Given that his newfound enthusiasm eventually took the Harder They Fall actor all the way to the Yale School of Drama, it’s not the first time he’s shared his love of The Dark Knight. Majors previously contributed an essay about watching the Christopher Nolan sequel for the first time to Variety.

“And 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. Nolan’s second installment of the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy holds in its run time an impregnable truth: Life and people are beautifully complicated and evolving.”

Majors is now playing a comic book villain himself, though in the MCU. He made his debut appearance in the first season of Loki as He Who Remains and will be unveiling Kang the Conqueror’s full potential for multidimensional menace in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania before going on to be the next big bad that will bring the Avengers back together.

“I’m entering into something that is so massive, so mega,” Majors says in his conversation with EW. “I’m humbled, I’m excited. I’m full of energy for it. I have an undying passion for it, and I know I’m not doing it alone.”

After a memorable turn as a sensitive playwright in A24's The Last Black Man In San Francisco made Majors one to watch in 2019, he broke out further with his 2020 roles in Lovecraft Country and Da 5 Bloods. Besides Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, he’ll also be seen in Creed III later this year and recently premiered Magazine Dreams at Sundance.

 
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