Jonathan Tucker
Jonathan Tucker is an actor, born 1982.
Jonathan Tucker (born 1982) has the kind of filmography that looks like bad luck until you notice how consistent the casting is. He started as a teenager in Sleepers, played Tim Weiner in The Virgin Suicides, and then spent the early 2000s as the young man in trouble across a run of horror and thriller pictures: Morgan in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dennis Kelly in Hostage, Jeff McIntire in The Ruins, Josh in Pulse.
The through line is volatility. Directors cast Tucker when a scene needs somebody who might do something, and he is unusually good at holding that possibility open without playing it. In the Valley of Elah gave him the most serious version, as Mike Deerfield, and Hannibal gave him the showiest, as Matthew Brown.
Television is where the actual career happened. The Black Donnellys, Parenthood, Kingdom from 2014 to 2017, Justified, Snowfall, Major Craddock in Westworld, City on a Hill, Debris: that is a decade and a half of series work, some of it in leads, none of it on shows large enough to make him famous. Charlie's Angels in 2019 put him back in a studio film as Hodak. It reads as a career that has been underpaid rather than unlucky.
Movies (21)
- Sleepers (1996)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- Charlie's Angels (2019)
- The Virgin Suicides (2000)
- God Is a Bullet (2023)
- The Ruins (2008)
- Pulse (2006)
- Hostage (2005)
- The Next Three Days (2010)
- 100 Girls (2000)
- In the Valley of Elah (2007)
- Two If by Sea (1996)
- Troublemakers (1994)
- Criminal (2004)
- Veronika Decides to Die (2009)
- Cherry Crush (2007)
- Palm Trees and Power Lines (2023)
- Sweet Virginia (2017)
- The Deep End (2001)
- Day 73 with Sarah (2007)
- Meskada (2010)
TV (12)
Where to start with Jonathan Tucker
Kingdom is where to start, and almost nobody watched it: three years of a lead role that asks for total physical commitment and gets a genuinely raw performance back. Nothing else in the filmography gives him that much room.
For films, In the Valley of Elah is the serious pick and the best thing he is in. Sweet Virginia is a small-town crime picture that deserved a bigger audience and holds his most controlled work. Genre viewers should take The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Ruins as a pair, both nastier than their reputations suggest. Hannibal is the guest turn everyone quotes, and Westworld is the one you have probably already seen without registering that it was him.