Jonathan Majors hasn’t technically had a place he calls home since he finished grad school in 2016. For now, his LA home is at the Four Seasons, where we’re meeting for dinner on a December evening. “It’s been cool. I like it,” the actor, who appears on our 2023 Hollywood cover, says as he scoots into the booth with a small ceramic cup. “I can make any place home. It’s an occupational hazard. It’s been that way since I was a boy, though. We moved around a lot.”
Majors, raised in Texas by his single mother who’s a pastor, had some bumps in the road on his way to stardom, getting in trouble for skirmishes at school and, for a while, living out of his car. But acting brought him purpose and peace, and soon after graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 2016, he appeared in his first feature-film role in Hostiles, opposite Christian Bale. Notable work in indies like The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the HBO series Lovecraft Country, Netflix’s The Harder They Fall, and last year’s fighter pilot drama Devotion followed.
It’s a good thing Majors is okay with being on the move because the pace of his world is about to increase dramatically. This year the actor will enter the stratosphere when he plays a Marvel villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, opening February 17. Major’s Kang the Conqueror, a time-traveling baddie who takes on different forms in different timelines, will serve as the MCU’s main villain for several upcoming Marvel films, including 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Majors will follow that up with the release of Creed III in March, in which he stars opposite Michael B. Jordan as a former childhood friend who returns with something to prove after a long prison sentence.
For these roles and the indie Magazine Dreams—which debuted at Sundance to rapturous reviews, with Vanity Fair’s chief critic heralding his performance as a “terrifying wonder”—Majors bulked up to about 200 pounds, often doing three workouts a day and eating around 6,100 calories. His physical transformation has gotten a lot of attention, but it’s the taut, soul-bearing performances he delivers that make him one of the most promising actors working today.
Here, Majors, who often makes his way to Atlanta where his nine-year-old daughter lives (they have a rule in which they try not to spend more than 10 days apart), admits his first meeting with Marvel many years ago didn’t go so well, and shares what he thinks makes a movie star.
Tank top by Tom Ford; pants by Dolce & Gabbana; watch by Rolex.PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN KLEIN; STYLED BY PATTI WILSON.
Vanity Fair: How does having to change your body so significantly affect you emotionally?
Jonathan Majors: In my drama school, something they really pushed on us was “don’t lift weights, don’t work out.” They were adamant, especially with the fellas, about not getting too big, primarily because it changes your joints, changes what we call the breathing costume. I always had an issue with that because I grew up playing sports at a very competitive level in Texas, so I came as strong as an 18-year-old kid can be. To answer the question, what it does for me is it brings you closer to the character. I’ve had this debate with my current mentors and old acting teachers where I go, “This is actually part of the craft of acting.” It brings you close to the characters and it gets quite spiritual. It is as little acting as possible, which is my biggest thing: Don’t lie. Tell the truth.
