Johnathan McClain

Johnathan McClain is originally from South Carolina, but despite that, he feels like he turned out okay.  Owing to his desperate need for validation and adoration, he decided early on to become an actor.

At the age of 21, he moved to Chicago where he wrote and began performing his critically acclaimed one-man show, Like It Is.  Quoting the Chicago Reader:  “If we’re ever to return to a day when theatre truly matters, we’ll need a few hundred more artists with McClain’s vision and courage.”  On the heels of its critical and commercial success, the show subsequently moved to New York, where Johnathan was compared favorably to such solo performance visionaries as Eric Bogosian, John Leguizamo, and Anna Deavere Smith.

Johnathan feels privileged to have lived for many years in New York and his work there includes appearing Off-Broadway in the original cast of Jonathan Tolins’ The Last Sunday In June at The Century Center, as well as at Lincoln Center Theatre and with the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab.  Around the country, he has been seen on stage at the American Conservatory Theatre, Florida Stage, Paper Mill Playhouse, and the National Jewish Theatre.  Los Angeles stage credits include the LA Weekly Award nominated world premiere of Cold/Tender at The Theatre @ Boston Court and the LA Times’ Critic’s Choice production of The Glass Menagerie at The Colony Theatre for which he received a Garland Award.

On film, he appeared briefly in the Academy Award nominated Far From Heaven, and on television it seems he has a penchant for working with blonde starlets, having had series regular roles on UPN’s The Bad Girl’s Guide starring Jenny McCarthy and Jessica Simpson’s sitcom pilot for ABC.  Other television work includes Without A Trace, CSI, CSI: Miami, Law & Order: SVU, Happy Family with John Larroquette and Christine Baranski, and for an amusing time Johnathan was the host of Sponk!, a kid’s improv comedy show on Nickelodeon and Noggin.  He can also be heard as a regular contributor to the Public Radio International program, Fair Game from PRI, and is active in the world of competitive performance poetry, or “Slam.”  You can catch him performing at various poetry venues in New York and L.A., or if you see him on the street, ask him to spit some hot fire.  He will.

For reasons beyond his control, Johnathan currently lives in Los Angeles.