Jason Momoa’s favourite actors of all time: “He’s a God to me”
It must be an occupational hazard for Jason Momoa to get typecast. After all, his name has become entirely synonymous with long-haired, muscle-bound action and/or water-based superhero characters, so much so that it’s actually difficult to remember a different actor who has played any of those roles other than him over the years.
From Conan the Barbarian to Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones to Aquaman to Duncan Idaho in Dune, nobody does luscious-locked weapon-wielding quite like Momoa. Of course, its also the reason why he keeps getting cast in these roles; nobody else does them quite so well or so convincingly.
As his brilliant, self-parodying performance in the recent A Minecraft Movie attests to, the actor knows exactly what’s needed of him in terms of screen presence and has the acting chops to do far more than that on top, including the comedy required for that role alongside Jack Black.
It’s that ability that has made him one of Hollywood’s most in-demand performers at the moment; he currently has some 11 different projects in varying stages of development, including huge franchises like Dune, Supergirl, Street Fighter and the next instalment in the Fast and Furious series.
Momoa’s movie influences hint at why he has the depth of film understanding that has made him such a success; when revealing his top five films to Rotten Tomatoes, the Hawaiian-born ex-model showed love for some of the finest actors to ever appear on screen, in addition to enjoying genuinely challenging movies.
One actor that he obviously worships is Jack Nicholson, the three-time Academy Award-winning legend responsible for some of the finest performances of all time. Momoa struggled to whittle down Nicholson movies, understandably, for the list, and so just went with three. Well, who is going to argue with him?
He said, “I’d say The Shining. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m a huge Jack Nicholson fan. He’s obviously… Everything from Five Easy Pieces, another one that’s just phenomenal to me… Yeah, he’s a God to me. I love him. I don’t know how to properly explain why, but he’s just fantastic. His sense of humour, his intensity, his charm, you know. There’s only one Jack. I love him.”
Marlon Brando is another acting icon to make his shortlist, specifically in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, the claustrophobic melodrama that won three ‘Best Actor’ Oscars, although surprisingly not one for Brando. Says Momoa, “[It’s] one of my ultimate favourites. Brando’s amazing. Brando’s one of my favourites”.
Next on Momoa’s list is The Last of the Mohicans, the sprawling Native Indian war drama that starred Daniel Day-Lewis, a modern-day acting great the actor admires, to put it mildly. He explains, “Last of the Mohicans was like my childhood favourite. I love that movie. My favourite movie is probably the life of Daniel Day-Lewis. You really want to say Gangs of New York because he’s so amazing, but then you want to say There Will Be Blood. I mean, really, he’s so amazing. My Left Foot, Last of the Mohicans; the guy is just a freak of nature. He’s like a national treasure.”
In a complete change of tone, Momoa also picked Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the semi-biographical surreal masterpiece from Hunter S Thompson starring Johnny Depp and directed by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. Of it, he noted, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of my favourites. I love the book. Terry Gilliam is phenomenal. I love Terry Gilliam, I just love his mind. I love that, you know, he doesn’t even do drugs. The guy’s just f***ing crazy. Absolutely mad genius, and I love him to pieces.”
Finally, just to show that Momoa is no shrinking violet (as if anyone might think that, having watched any of his films), he picked Alan Parker’s incredibly dark Turkish prison drama Midnight Express, a film that is guaranteed to depress even the most happy-go-lucky souls. He commented, “That and A Woman Under the Influence were the first two movies I ever watched and went, ‘That is not a movie’. You do not see anyone going, ‘Cut! I’ll be in my f***ing trailer!’ You watch that s*** and you are like, you are in that. So Midnight Express, that is really great filmmaking.”
Momoa is about to be seen in Apple TV+’s epic series Chief of War, in which he plays a soft-spoken brain surgeon with a love of painting with watercolours in his spare time. Only joking, he plays a massive warrior with a spear.
