Jason Momoa American Actor Born 1979 in Honolulu

Early life

Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa was born on 1 August 1979 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father is a painter of Native Hawaiian descent and his mother is a photographer. Shortly after his birth his parents divorced, and he was raised by his mother in Norwalk, Iowa. He attended Norwalk High School, where he played on the soccer team, and later studied at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Colorado State University is also listed among his schools. In his early teens he became a rock climber after his mother took him to the Needles area of South Dakota.

Career

Momoa began acting in Honolulu with the series Baywatch: Hawaii, in which he played Jason Ioane. In 2004 he joined the main cast of the Fox drama North Shore and appeared in the road comedy Johnson Family Vacation. From 2005 to 2009 he played Ronon Dex in the science-fiction series Stargate Atlantis, a part for which he learned martial arts.

He gained wider attention as Khal Drogo in the first two seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones (2011–2012); he has said he performed a haka at his audition. In 2011 he took the title role in the film Conan the Barbarian. In 2014 he directed and co-wrote the drama Road to Paloma, in which he also starred, and he appeared in the thriller Wolves the same year. He later played a cannibal in The Bad Batch and acted in Braven (2018).

In 2016 he first appeared as Arthur Curry, Aquaman, in a cameo in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. He played the character in Justice League (2017), in its director's cut Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), and in the solo film Aquaman (2018), which earned about 1.15 billion dollars worldwide, the highest figure among his titles with box-office data on record. He returned in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), directed by James Wan, which was his final film as the character, apart from a brief uncredited appearance in The Flash.

Television has been a steady part of his work. From 2016 to 2018 he played Declan Harp in the Canadian historical series Frontier and served as an executive producer. He starred in the Apple TV series See from 2019 and in Chief of War (2025), in which he plays Kaʻiana and is also co-creator and executive producer.

Other roles include Duncan Idaho in Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021), the villain Dante Reyes in Fast X (2023), Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison in A Minecraft Movie (2025), and Lobo in Supergirl (2026). He is also credited as a writer on The Last Manhunt (2022), and his latest listed film credit is The Wrecking Crew (2026). His records list 33 screen credits since 2003, and Amber Heard and Gal Gadot each appear in four of the same titles.

Momoa is also a musician. He plays bass, guitar, mandolin and ukulele, and he formed the trio ÖOF TATATÁ in 2024. In July 2025 he hosted the farewell concert of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne in Birmingham, England.

Public roles

Momoa is an advocate for the United Nations Environment Programme and has worked on protecting the world's oceans and coral reefs. In 2019 he took part in protests against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, a site sacred to many Native Hawaiians.

Personal life

Momoa has two children with the actress Lisa Bonet. The couple married in October 2017, and the marriage ended in divorce. He began practising Brazilian jiu-jitsu in 2017 and has a number of tattoos, including a half sleeve on his left forearm that honours his family's ʻaumakua, or ancestral spirit.