Jonah Hauer-King
Jonah Hauer-King is an actor, born 1995.
Jonah Hauer-King arrived in prestige television more or less fully formed. In 2017 he was Paul Wilcox in the Howards End adaptation and Laurie in a Little Women miniseries, which is an unusual way to begin: two literary period pieces in one year, both requiring a young man who can be sincere without seeming simple.
That has been the job description ever since. He plays earnestness, and he plays it straight, which is rarer than it sounds and much harder to make interesting than irony is. World on Fire gave him Harry Chase across a wartime ensemble from 2019. The Song of Names cast him as a character's younger self, credited here as Dovidl at seventeen to twenty-three, and The Tattooist of Auschwitz did the same thing, casting him as the young Lali Sokolov. He is hired again and again to be somebody's earlier, less compromised version.
Prince Eric in the 2023 Little Mermaid is the biggest job and the clearest test of that sincerity, because the part has no irony available to it whatsoever. Since then the credits have widened on purpose: a slasher sequel, a nuclear-crisis thriller in A House of Dynamite, a Doctor Who appearance in 2025, a William Tell film. Four of the titles listed here are dated 2025 alone. Whether that range is genuine or merely varied is the question the next stretch of his career has to answer.
Movies (12)
TV (6)
Where to start with Jonah Hauer-King
The Song of Names is where to start, and almost nobody does. A quiet film about music and absence with a genuinely difficult central role, it asks more of him than anything since, and it settles the question of whether he can act rather than simply glow.
World on Fire is the sustained one, a wartime drama running across several years with a large ensemble, and he holds a lead thread through it without ever pushing. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is heavier and less successful as television, though the performance in it is careful.
The Little Mermaid is what most people arrive for. Eric is a thankless part and he is better in it than the film around him deserves, particularly in the scenes without songs. A House of Dynamite is the interesting recent turn, procedural and tense and entirely unglamorous. Little Women is the charming one, and Doctor Who is a good place to watch him play something less well-behaved.