Jonny Weston
Jonny Weston is an actor, born 1988.
The lead role came first for Jonny Weston and the career never quite caught up with it. In 2012 he played the surfer Jay Moriarity in Chasing Mavericks, a real person and a genuinely punishing physical assignment, and for the next three years the industry treated him as a leading man in waiting. Project Almanac in 2015 gave him David Raskin, the clever kid who builds the machine, and made him the lead of a studio release.
The trouble was what surrounded it. He is Edgar in both Insurgent and Allegiant, a supporting part carried across two films without either giving him much to hold. He is Jimy in Taken 3 and Mason in We Are Your Friends. The better work sits in the same early window and got a fraction of the audience: John Dies at the End in 2013, About Cherry and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You in 2012, all small films where somebody wanted something specific from him.
Since about 2017 the parts have shrunk and the budgets with them, through Beyond Skyline and, in 2023, The Tutor. The exception is Medal of Honor in 2018, where he played the soldier Ty Carter and was asked for something plainer and harder than any of the franchise work had bothered to want.
Movies (11)
TV (2)
Where to start with Jonny Weston
Chasing Mavericks is the honest starting point. It is a sincere, slightly clunky sports film built on real waves and real physical risk, and he is very good in it.
Project Almanac is the one most people saw, a found-footage time-travel picture that is smarter in its first half than its second, and it is the clearest look at him as a studio lead. From there, John Dies at the End is the cult item and by some distance the strangest film he has been in. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the small literary adaptation for anyone who wants him quiet. Medal of Honor is the late, serious credit worth an hour. Insurgent and Allegiant are franchise obligations and can be skipped without loss.