Sam Jones
Sam Jones is an actor, born 1983.
Three seasons of Smallville is the credit that follows him. Jones, born in Boston in 1983, played Pete Ross from 2001 to 2003 in the Superman origin story told as a teen drama, which put him on a hit network show while he was still very young and then wrote him out of it. That is a hard shape for a career to recover from, and the work since has been steady rather than starry.
2006 was the year he got two real film parts. Glory Road cast him as Willie Worsley in the ensemble of a college basketball drama, and Home of the Brave gave him Billy Marsh in a picture about soldiers returning from Iraq. Neither made him a lead, but both are the kind of ensemble work that keeps an actor employed.
The second long-running role came in 2010 with Blue Mountain State, where he played Craig Shilo in a college football comedy with a considerably lower opinion of itself than Smallville had, and he came back for the follow-up film Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland. Around those sit Louis Fletcher in Zig Zag, an episode of the anthology series The Nightmare Room, and Wishbone in Krews. He also played Chaz Pratt on ER, which is not among the credits listed here.
Movies (6)
TV (4)
Where to start with Sam Jones
Smallville is where to begin, because Pete Ross is the most interesting version of the role: the best friend who knows the secret and gets nothing for it, played by an actor young enough to make the loneliness read.
Blue Mountain State is the opposite register and the better showcase for his comic timing, a football comedy that is far cruder and far more relaxed, with Craig Shilo as one of its few sane inhabitants. Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland follows it and is strictly for people who liked the series.
On film, Glory Road is the one worth the evening, an ensemble sports drama with real history behind it, and Home of the Brave is the more serious swing of the two 2006 releases. Zig Zag is the early curiosity, a small indie that got lost.