"Let's just play already!" It's a breezy morning at the courts in Santa Monica, and Jon Bernthal wants to keep the game moving. "We gotta stop bitching about every call," he says, pausing to regain his breath.
He jokingly calls this a "stoner's game"--it's mostly waiters, beach bums, ex-gangbangers, and actors, who've all been showing up for years. Bernthal has been a regular since he arrived from New York in 2006, before his life as Shane Walsh, the angry number-two man on AMC's The Walking Dead.
Today he's guarding a 6'6" tank named Jawon who won't stop calling cheap fouls. But even at 6 feet and 180 pounds, Bernthal's not intimidated. "Let's try this again," he says. Moments later, Jawon grazes Bernthal's head with his own and--come on, man--calls another foul. "You're way too big to stop play for that!"
Earlier, Bernthal had arrived at the courts wearing all black: a faded hoodie from the Mayweather boxing club, a ball cap cocked to the side, boxing sweats pulled high above his waist. His nose is mangled from boxing (broken 13 times), and as he approaches, he's flanked by two pit bulls.
But then he steps close, flashes a smile, and draws you in. The pit bulls, it turns out, are rescued fighting dogs. They're two of several he's taken in or trained in recent years, sometimes with help from his father, who is chairman of the board of the Humane Society of the United States.
Since he was killed off in The Walking Dead, Bernthal's career has blown up. You can see him--sporting 20 pounds of extra muscle--in The Wolf of Wall Street, where he plays a cash-laundering drug pusher opposite Leo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. In December he'll be in Grudge Match as the son of an aging boxer played by Robert De Niro. And later next year he'll appear in Fury, a World War II movie starring Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf.
It's all happening for the 36-year-old. He's finding success by focusing on what matters, ignoring the fouls that life dishes, and following a few rules.
1. Be Ready to Change
De Niro, of course, famously gained and then lost weight to play fighter Jake LaMotta in the movie Raging Bull more than 30 years ago. By training at a boxing gym six days a week, Bernthal discovered that he could tweak his routine in small ways to pack on muscle as needed. He was 200 pounds for one role and 160 for another--in the same year.
The man is wired to adapt. The friendly eyes behind that lumpy nose reveal an everyman conviviality that you don't expect from an actor who's making it in Hollywood. He's tough but charming, scrappy but gentle. One minute he's playing alpha male to his dogs ("Guys, what did I say? Put your heads on the ground"); the next he's showering kisses on his two-year-old son, Henry Waylon, before the little guy goes for a stroll with his mom. He calls men "brother" and women "sweetie" and somehow gets away with it.
It's on the strength of this dichotomy that Walking Dead series developer and executive producer Frank Darabont wrote Bernthal into his latest show, Mob City, premiering December 4 on TNT. Bernthal plays a street-tough detective in 1940s Los Angeles. It's a modern noir, perfect for a strong-yet-vulnerable lead character. "Jon is earnest and open in ways you might not expect from someone who comes off so physically male," says Darabont. "There's nothing metrosexual or feminized about him, which is very rare among male actors these days."
2. Keep an Outsider's Mentality
"I'm not really friends with actors," Bernthal says as he sips black coffee after beating' Jawon's team by a bucket. "It's just not really my thing."
These are odd words coming from a man who's on his way up in the acting game. But when he's home in L.A., Bernthal divides his time between his family, the court, and the boxing gym. The schedule keeps him out of trouble. Of his youth in Washington, D.C., Bernthal says, "I was a knucklehead." He played baseball and basketball but didn't spend all his aggression in the games. So what did he do with it? "A variety of things," he says, holding up two loose fists--scuffles that, it seems, he'd rather not discuss.
That's partly why Bernthal always makes time to box, even when he's on the road. "You can find a gym anywhere," he says. "They usually aren't in the best parts of town, but you meet interesting people and establish a solid group of friends."
And that's his biggest source of happiness: friendship. Growing up, Bernthal and his buddies "always found weakness in people who were doing things just to fit in. We were attracted to misfits and people who didn't abide by the usual social norms. That's really helped me."
3. Follow Your Own Path
Bernthal remembers one pivotal drama class from his freshman year at Skidmore College. Students performed an emotionally raw show-and-tell exercise, but he forgot to bring a prop. "But had my catcher's glove with me, so I launched into this story about how my mom had given me this mitt on her deathbed and how me and my brother go to the field and have a catch and talk it through. It was all bullshit, but I'm crying my eyes out. And I look around, and people in the whole room are crying their eyes out too."
So he followed through. He traveled to Russia to study at the Moscow Art Theater. He took courses in ballet and acrobatics, caught for a season in a Russian semipro baseball league, and returned home with a master's in fine arts. "You have to really explore your personality," Bernthal says. "You can't just assume the role your family and coworkers establish for you."
The result is hard to miss. "Jon is a force of nature," says Darabont. "He's appreciative because he loves what he's doing."
Bernthal won't argue the point. "I'm indebted to this world," he says. "My career has given me direction. And that has afforded me happiness."
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