Johnny Whitworth
Johnny Whitworth is an actor, born 1975.
A talent contest is an unusual way into acting, and it is how Johnny Whitworth got in. Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1975 and raised between his mother there and his father in Dallas, he won the first Young and Modern Man contest as a teenager, moved to Los Angeles, and took his first acting job at eighteen with a guest spot on Party of Five. His film debut was Bye Bye Love in 1995, and the same year he played A.J. in Empire Records.
Empire Records found its audience long after release and became a cult film, and A.J. is a large part of why. He is the sensitive one, the artist with a deadline of his own invention and a confession he cannot get out of his mouth, and Whitworth plays him with a slouching, hesitant quality that the rest of the cast does not have. It remains the best use anyone has made of him.
He stepped away from acting for a couple of years, then came back in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker (1997) as Donny Ray Black, the young man whose insurer will not pay. It is a small, unshowy performance in a courtroom film and he holds it without pushing.
Since then the industry has mostly wanted him for hard men. Vernon in Limitless, Ray Carrigan in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Cage Wallace across The 100, Darden in 3:10 to Yuma, Scotch in Gamer, Detective Jake Berkeley on CSI: Miami. He is a convincing heavy. He is a better actor when someone lets him be fragile.
Movies (15)
TV (3)
Where to start with Johnny Whitworth
Empire Records first, no argument. It is a scrappy, badly structured film with a genuinely good cast, and his A.J. is the emotional centre of it.
Follow it with The Rainmaker to see the same softness put to serious use. Coppola gives him very little screen time and he makes all of it count, which is the pairing that tells you the Empire Records performance was not an accident.
After that you are into the heavy phase. Limitless is the sharpest of them, a short, nasty turn that helps the film start well. 3:10 to Yuma puts him in a very good ensemble in a small role, The 100 gives him a sustained run as an antagonist, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is loud, silly and the one to skip unless you want the full list.