Jonno Roberts

Jonno started his acting career in New Zealand, where he was a company member at Christchurch's Free Theatre, a group notorious for extreme physicality and occasional violence visited on actors and audience alike, as well as for elaborate staging in non-traditional spaces including nightclubs, a law court, museums, and a century-old brewery malt-house.In 1998 he went on to perform in theaters in Europe, Russia and the US, studying at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, and eventually earning a Masters degree from the Moscow Arts Theatre, the theatre and school founded by the legendary Russian actor, teacher and director Constantin Stanislavski.Working in the US since 2000, Jonno gained a reputation for hard-hitting performances in plays like the Tony-Award winning Take Me Out; the hit New York production of Tracey Letts' Bug; and in numerous productions that have been acknowledged as American theatre landmarks: Eilif in Janos Szasz' devastating Mother Courage at the ART, Boston; as Edmund to Stacy Keach's King Lear at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago; and as the title character in a polarizing staging of the Alban Berg opera Wozzeck in Toronto, Canada.On camera, Jonno has made a career playing the bad guy: evil twins, evil warlords, evil pimps, evil lawyers, murderous husbands, psychopathic night club owners, Serbian terrorists, and escaped convicts; he has rarely been asked to play a character that one could characterize as being nice.His performance as a conflicted American expatriate in the feature film The Elephant King (opposite Tate Ellington and Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn) was nominated for awards at festivals in Europe, the US, and Cairo.He teaches acting at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Hollywood and at On Set Coaching in Santa Monica, California. Show less «