Johnathon Schaech

Johnathon Schaech is an American actor and writer.

In 1989, dance troupe Chippendales flew Schaech out to Los Angeles and offered him a job, but his father urged him to aim higher. He signed with Wilhelmina West and survived for three years doing commercials and bit parts in movies. Schaech studied under acting teacher, Roy London, who also taught stars such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Brad Pitt and Forest Whitaker. He studied with Roy London for three and half years until London's death in 1993.

n 1991, Schaech went through a three-month audition process before he landed the lead in Franco Zeffirelli's movie El Storia de Capinera (The Sparrow), a period piece drama filmed in Sicily and Rome and also starring Angela Bettis and Vanessa Redgrave. Schaech would have become a regular fixture on Fox TV's Brisco County, Jr. but he bypassed the steady work to portray drifter Xavier Red in Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation.

Schaech won a pivotal role in How to Make an American Quilt opposite Winona Ryder. In 1996, How to Make an American Quilt received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 1995, Tom Hanks cast Schaech as the ambitious but self-absorbed lead singer of The Wonders in That Thing You Do!, Hanks' writing and directing debut. Schaech next took the male lead opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Lange in Tri-Star's 1998 thriller Hush. He was featured as one of the most promising leading men of tomorrow on the 1996's Vanity Fair cover alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Benicio del Toro.

In 2000, Schaech starred in his first major play, David Rabe's A Question for Mercy, playing a Colombian born gay Manhattanite dying of AIDS.

In 2005, he was cast opposite his then wife, Christina Applegate, in James Patterson's Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas for CBS. The film shot in Halifax, Canada. Schaech starred along with David Arquette in the CBS pilot Commuters.

He was cast in the first season of Showtime ‘s series Ray Donovan, appearing in five episode as an eccentric movie star, Sean Walker. He also played the corn-rowed villain opposite Kellan Lutz in Renny Harlin's The Legend of Hercules, gaining 30 lbs of muscle to play the Egyptian mercenary Tarak.

In 2016, The CW’s Legends of Tomorrow cast Schaech as DC Comics bounty hunter Jonah Hex.

Schaech has written co-written a number of screenplays with Richard Chizmar, including Heroes, Road House 2, based on a story by Miles Chapman, Masters of Horror The Washingtonians, based on a story by Bentley Little and The Poker Club, based on the story by Ed Gorman. Schaech and Chizmar have also co-written screenplays based on stories by Peter Crowther: Fear Itself: Eater; Lewis Shiner: Fear Itself: The Circle; and Stephen King: From A Buick 8 and Black House.