Biografia
Jonathan trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, where he mastered not only embodying the essence of a tree but also becoming a cup of hot coffee. He then attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he truly learned the craft of acting. His classmates included Daniel Day-Lewis, Miranda Richardson, Greta Scacchi, Matt (Max Headroom) Frewer, Samantha (Miss Moneypenny) Bond, and several other notable figures who likely don't recall him.
Launching his professional career in Canada with the lead role in Equus, Jonathan earned his Equity card, experienced his first stage kiss, and underwent a police visit due to the nude scene. Shortly after, he sought asylum in Britain as a cultural refugee via a Commonwealth Under 26 Work Permit.
His West End credits include seven months performing alongside Charlton Heston and Ben Cross in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and The Jungle Book featuring Fenella Fielding and the late Jeremy Sinden, son of Sir Donald. His repertory roles encompass the fiery Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (Hornchurch), Nobbs the Boxer in Curse of the Baskervilles (Plymouth Theatre Royal), and a National Trust Stately Home Outdoor Tour of Love's Labour's Lost, where he portrayed Lord Dumaine for four months, rain or shine, from Hadrian's Wall to the Scilly Isles during the Great British Summer of 1984. He received excellent reviews and unfortunately caught pneumonia.
During this period, he also began working as a stage swordfight choreographer, a vocation he continues and humorously regards as his secondary form of unemployment. He has fight-directed numerous productions, including two West End shows in London, one starring David 'Starsky and Hutch' Soul, as well as Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Vienna English Theatre in Austria.
A return to Canada saw him playing dress designer Bobbi Franklyn in Ray Cooney's Run For Your Wife, speaking in Glaswegian as the homicidal Earl of Douglas in Falstaff (Henry IV i and ii) at the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and taking on the title role in The Dresser. Back in London, a standout role was Sir Robert Walpole in The Art of Success at the Arcola.
In 1995, to mark the Royal Shakespeare Company's consistent refusal of his tenth annual audition request, Jonathan bequeathed them his skull to secure the eternal, albeit posthumous, role of Yorick in Hamlet. The ensuing international media attention ensured the RSC casting department now ignores him deliberately rather than passively.
Jonathan’s DeWalt Powerdrill commercial, in which he portrays a gay skinhead, occasionally airs on Chris Tarrant's The Greatest Commercials Never Shown. He has led the Boston Tea Party for a BBC documentary, played a rogue Soviet General in a Eurofighter promo, an incinerated Luftwaffe pilot in Miramax's Below, an intergalactic drug dealer in TekWars (directed by William 'Captain Kirk' Shatner), appeared on BBC Radio 4, and is the voice of the "Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker."
Having recently obtained United States citizenship and proud to be legally unemployed in three countries, Jonathan now aspires to serve his newest homeland by joining the CIA, having perfected the art of working publicly while maintaining near-total anonymity.
