Jean Kartal: One To Watch
Jean Kartal is a Russian born/Swedish actor and writer based in Los Angeles. A stroke of luck and serendipity launched Jean’s career when he was discovered at a party by a director. Jean, a basketball player since the age of 9, didn’t have an aspiration to act, but was offered to play the role of a boxer.
Never having studied acting, Jean decided to take classes from Will Smith’s personal acting coach, Aaron Speiser. Jean was committed to the craft — studying and graduating from the prestigious Stella Adler Academy of Acting.
While Jean was also doing some modeling for a while, he had the incredible opportunity of auditioning for his first feature film role in London for ‘Star Wars- The Force Awakens’. There were around 840 actors participating in the audition for an open call and Jean made it down to the top 1, which was a pretty incredible achievement. Jean’s theatrical debut was on stage, when he played Ned Weeks, in ‘Destiny Of Me’ directed by the Oscar nominated director Milton Justice, which was an incredible experience for him. He also played the starring role of Jesus in the film ‘Abigail’.
For his own personal approach to acting he says, “I’m personally a hard worker, and my work ethic in acting comes from my work ethic when I played basketball. My mentor Milton Justice once told me, if you want to be the best actor you have to see it as an Olympic sport and you have to behave like an Olympic athlete preparing for the games.”
Jean Kartal’s upcoming film is a virtual reality project directed by Brett Leonard (who has directed Denzel Washington, Anthony Hopkins and Russell Crowe). We can’t wait to see what this talented actor does next!
