John M. Jackson
BIOGRAPHY
John M. Jackson was born on June 1, 1950, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We don't know for sure how old he was when he moved to Austin, Texas, but John says, "I'm still a Texan although I live here in L.A. If you're born and raised there you can't get the state out of your system. It's pretty much home."1
"As a teenager, John was one of the last people to meet President John F. Kennedy before his assassination in Dallas. He was a 13-year-old journalism student who greeted Kennedy at a hotel in Fort Worth on Nov. 22, 1963.
"'Kennedy absolutely made you feel he was the center of your world when he shook your hand,' John said. 'He was dead two hours later. I was stunned. He was the first president I ever met.
"'It was a shocking experience. I was in class and my English teacher walked in, 'Everybody put your books down and listen to the announcement.' She was crying.'"2
In high school, John played football. He was an offensive tackle/defensive end, and he got the scar on his nose from an ill-fitting football helmet. When he went to the University of Texas, he was a walk-on for the team, but he injured his knee after a few weeks. That was the end of his football career.
John held a variety of jobs during his college years. He worked on oil rigs in Texas and Louisiana, dug ditches, and worked in construction to help pay his way through the University of Texas.
John never served in the military. After college, he went on to become a Social Studies (history and geography) teacher at LBJ High School in Austin. His favorite period of history to teach was the Cuban Missile Crisis. From what we have heard from people he taught and taught with, John was a popular (with both students and faculty) teacher there, and he was voted "Favorite Teacher" almost every year he taught; his nickname was "Action Jackson." John taught there for five years, spending the summers as a guide on horseback at the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
His acting career began in his late 20s doing community theatre. He says he just sort of "fell into it." John went first to New York around 1980 and then to Los Angeles in 1983 to further his acting career. According to his agent, the "M" in his name doesn't stand for anything. When John went to register with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), there was already a John Jackson. SAG rules don't allow two actors with the same name, so John added the "M" to distinguish himself. In many filmographies on Mr. Jackson, you will find roles that are not his, including "Chinatown" (which was presumably the "original" John Jackson) and "The Jericho Mile," which included among its actors a John E. Jackson.
Since moving to Los Angeles, John has had a long and successful career playing a wide variety of roles in feature films and TV movies, as well as numerous guest-starring roles on series besides JAG.
"While Jackson is content playing the admiral, he longs to portray Lyndon Johnson on the big screen.
"'I've always admired Johnson,' he said. 'A lot of times on TV and in movies Texas characters are played as ignorant rednecks. But they seem to be getting away from that.
"'Johnson was a really fine man and something of a paradox. Lord knows, he was one of the most effective American politicians of the 20th century.'"1
At the JAG Convention in October 1999, John talked about how much he enjoyed doing stage work. On the stage you "take a character from A to Z, and there’s no going back." It’s a whole different rhythm and feel than the start and stop and out-of-sequence filming of a movie or TV show. (John once played a woman - actually a transvestite - on the stage in a play called "Bent." His description of wearing a dress, heels, and makeup and swinging on a swing made us quite curious, to say the least!)
John enjoys the times he gets to play the 'bad guy' role. He said he has "found that, from a writing standpoint, much of the best writing is for people who are not the hero." He has writer friends who say it’s very freeing to write for those characters. "You can do things with them that you can’t do otherwise." But his favorite role to date was "Johnny B." in "The Spitfire Grill," even though he didn't have one word of dialogue in the whole movie. It took hours to get him into makeup, but he relished the challenge of having to act entirely with his eyes and his body language. His 'dream' role is, of course, to play Lyndon B. Johnson.
John is a huge baseball fan, and his favorite player is Nolan Ryan. In Season Two of JAG, there was a baseball sitting on his desk. That was his own personal ball autographed by Mr. Ryan. The ball was stolen in 1999, so as a Christmas gift that year, the JMJAS sent him another baseball, personally autographed to him by Nolan Ryan, along with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, with John's own signature engraved on it. This gift baseball was first seen on his desk in the Season Five episode, "Life or Death." As for other hobbies, John would like to "at some point, find a perfectly good running airplane to jump out of. I've always wanted to try it."3
According to Chas. Floyd Johnson, Executive Producer of JAG, John is an awesome dancer, and John admits that he and his wife enjoy swing dancing. John is also known as a big practical joker. He is well-liked by the cast and crew on the set of JAG. According to Chuck Carrington, "John Jackson is a 6’3", 50-year-old bald man who acts like an 8-year-old. He is a comedian. He’s always the center of attention. He’s a big kid, and for me it’s been great. Almost every scene I have done is with him. He has a great personality, and he’s a joy for all of us to work with."
John's agent says that John considers himself a husband, father, and then actor. Mr. Jackson takes his role as a husband and father very seriously. At the JAG Convention, he was solicitous of his wife and reluctant to talk in any but the most general terms about his children, admitting that he has received threatening letters in the past that make him a little wary. John compares parenting to teaching. "I can honestly say that my son is a friend of mine. That's a hard thing to do. It's like teaching. You want to get a good rapport with your students, but there's a line that can't be crossed. If you do cross it, the roles get gray and you don't have the same ability to teach."2
As for being an actor, John says, "I'm still trying to figure out how to act. I'm not writing, I don't have a script, I have no desire to direct and the only thing I'd really like to do is get back on stage."
© JMJAS
FILMOGRAPHY
Notable Tv guest appearences