Gallery Links:
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2022 Shoots > Shoot 004

 

BRITISH GQ: If anyone has the authority to tell us to clean up the planet, it’s Aquaman. So GQ sat down to talk to him about his efforts to rescue the ocean from plastic pollution and (yes, really) maybe even rescuing Timothée Chalamet again in Dune.

Jason Momoa doesn’t exactly love that he keeps dying, if you really want to get into it. “My kids are always like, ‘Are you gonna die again? You always die,” he says, a little forlornly. “I obviously made a name for myself dying so if you see me it’s like, ‘Momoa’s gonna jump on the bomb, I know it!’”

Thus far he has been shot in the head, blown up, smothered, died by suicide, had his throat slashed, and been stabbed in both the stomach and the chest. It was watching his most recent death, in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi spectacular Dune with his 12-year-old son, that really got to him. “It was pretty heart wrenching, cause I was like, ‘I’m right here buddy!’ But he was like, ‘Papa nooooooooo,’ he recalls, howling like a dog at the moon. “I said: ‘Listen dude: if you’re gonna go out, go out big.’”

Which might make it sound as though the Aquaman actor is a mere mortal, but if you saw Jason Momoa walking down the street (and not, say, emerging from the ocean with a trident in his hand, and the
promise of avenging his sea queen mother glinting in his eye) you might still wonder if this towering man didn’t arrive on dry land using a branch of coral as a surfboard, having caught a wave from a kingdom far more exciting than anywhere on planet earth. Some actors inhabit characters nothing like themselves; others play those that seem forged in their own image. Jason Momoa, built like a Land Cruiser, with a tangled mane of dark hair, and wide, open face topped with arched eyebrows, belongs to the latter camp. The army of otherworldly alphas the 42-year-old has played include a barbarian combatant hellbent on revenge (Conan the Barbarian), a Dothraki warlord (Game of Thrones), the warrior leader of the Alkenny tribe (See), a tribesman from planet Sateda in the Pegasus Galaxy (Stargate Atlantis), and, most famously, a majestic sea king (Aquaman).

In the comic books and DC mega movies, Aquaman rules over the kingdom of Atlantis, protecting the planet and all the lands that lurk beneath the surface of the ocean. But lately, Momoa just wants to walk through a shop without seeing a plastic bottle that will end up floating in the sea for the next thousand years.

“Every day there’s a dumpster fire,” he says. “Yes we’re trying to go green but what are the batteries doing? What are we doing to indigenous cultures and what does that mean? I’m not just going to blindly do this, there’s got to be proper laws written around these things. I don’t like bitching, I want to do something. But I feel like I don’t have much time,” he says over Zoom, his voice filled with the mixture of theatrical urgency and wide-eyed sincerity that you’d expect from a superhero at a moment of crisis, the ticking clock of an action movie hurrying him along almost audible in the background.

And to be fair, he’s not wrong. We are speaking in early July when Momoa is in London to shoot Fast and Furious 10. Two weeks from now the UK will witness the hottest temperature on record as motorways bend from the force of the sun and train tracks spontaneously burst into flames.

So he’s doing something. In June of this year Momoa was designated the UN Environment Programme’s Advocate for Life Below Water, working alongside charities and scientists to raise awareness and funding for the triple threat of crises we are facing of climate change, biodiversity loss and extreme pollution. Celebrity activism is often regarded at best as naive do-gooding and at worst as cynical branding. Momoa, though, is genuinely passionate about being Aquaman on screen and off. His advocacy has seen him campaign for reducing single-use plastic pollution, in part by setting up aluminium-bottled water company Mananalu, who remove plastic headed toward the ocean. He’s also collaborated on a range of plastic-free clothing and sporting apparel, from trainers to T-shirts.
Jason Momoa Aquaman and real life superhero is on a quest to save the ocean

So far his quest has seen him make an impassioned speech in front of the UN, and issue a desperate plea to Coca-Cola’s packaging company to start using aluminium to bottle water. This cause is personal to Momoa, because as it happens his origin story is about water, too.

Growing up in the landlocked Midwest, Momoa would stick posters of surfers inside his locker even though the other kids, all of whom looked totally different to him, would make fun of him for being a surfer dude. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii; his mother a photographer with Irish, German and Pawnee tribe ancestry, his father a painter with Native Hawaiian roots. When he was six months old he moved with his mother to Norwalk, Iowa, but growing up still felt the pull of the island he first landed on 4,000 miles away. One summer, Momoa remembers taking a yellow bus that wound its way all the way down to the Florida Keys to study at a marine biology camp and marvel at the creatures that lived beneath waves. “My dad was always in the water, you couldn’t get him out,” Momoa says. “He was a steersman and when I was younger I idolised him and my uncles and my cousins because they’re all surfers.” In the summers when he returned to Honolulu he took part in the Junior Lifeguard Program, which would end up being Method acting-level training for his first big break on Baywatch: Hawaii in the ‘90s, and after finishing high school he returned home to enroll in the University of
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I’m embarrassed to admit I missed this article and photoshoot for a year now lol But here it is!

 


 

Gallery Links:
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2021 Shoots > Shoot 004
[Magazine Scans] > 2021 Scans > 2021 Men’s Journal – July-August

 

MEN’S JOURNAL: “You eat meat, right?” Jason Momoa asks as we pass through his interim Toronto residence—a three-story Victorian—into the backyard, where two massive tomahawk rib-eyes hiss and smoke over a glowing grill.

“Here, grab one,” he says, snatching up the hunk of meat, childlike grin smeared across his signaturely hirsute face. The intense greeting seems medieval, classic Momoa—downright Dothraki—so I do as Khal Drogo instructs, holding up a smoldering, frenched rib bone just long enough for a selfie.

Checking the photo, Momoa issues the next directive. “We can’t post these,” he says poignantly. “You can see the houses behind us.” It’s odd to hear a man who embodies nomadic warlords and towering superheroes concede to such precaution. But inadvertently revealing your exact location to 16 million Instagram followers is a no-no, whether he’s hanging here or at his actual home in Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon.

There are other pics that he’s more eager to share, namely of an antique Land Rover just secured in a swap for two vintage Harley-Davidson choppers, a rare trade from his collection. “I usually just hoard everything when it comes to bikes and trucks and cars.”

One might guess as much from the ’36, ’37, and ’39 Harley knuckleheads parked on the grounds. “Those are just my choppers. My other bikes are on the way here,” he admits. “I love them all—knuckles, pans, shovels. They’re all different, they all sound great, and they’re all fucking awesome.”

“When the door to making films began to slowly open, I kicked it in and brought all my friends with me.” Boaz Kroon for Men’s Journal

And though he craves the sound “when you kickstart the bike and the motor growls right back at you,” the self-proclaimed “gas and oil guy” knows it’s a guilty pleasure. As a fierce advocate for ocean health, he’s making the shift to electric. “A lot of my trucks have been converted into e-vehicles,” he says. “I run solar power, and I love Harley’s electric LiveWire. You twist the throttle and jump to 100 miles an hour in three or four seconds. It’s a whole different sport, and there ain’t nothin’ about it except—bravo!”

This sort of full-throttle enthusiasm is Momoa’s true superpower, demonstrating that he’s got more than physical DNA to sustain his rapidly multiplying pursuits. Beyond his most visible presence as an actor, now he’s producing documentary passion projects and even parlaying his ongoing relationship with Harley-Davidson into directing a six-part series spotlighting real riders around the country.

Resplendent in pink shoes and purple pants, Momoa opens his Army-style sweater to reveal the pattern of V-twin motors on a Hawaiian silk shirt—part of a new apparel collaboration with Harley-Davidson. “This is the motor from my first motorcycle, a ’56 panhead with a ’48 springer front end,” he says, noting that he named the bike after his grandmother Mabel. Then, with a jovial turn, he tugs the fly of his pants, also part of the collection. “Not to flash my crotch here, but look, right behind the zipper.” Yep, the lettering on the thin strip of fabric reads, “Aloha.” With a belly
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Gallery Links:






GALLERY LINKS:
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2021 Shoots > Shoot 002
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2021 Shoots > Shoot 003
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2022 Shoots > Shoot 001
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2022 Shoots > Shoot 002
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > So Ill x On The Roam > 2022 > Photoshoot
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > Electric Sunglasses > 2021 > Photoshoot
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > Human Recreational Services > 2022 > Photoshoot
[Magazine Scans] > 2021 Scans > 2021 Deadline – November
[Magazine Scans] > 2021 Scans > 2021 Total Film Annual – December




January
12
2022
Gallery: Big Update!







 

Gallery Links:
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2014 Shoots > Set 019
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > Mananalu Water > 2021 > Photoshoot and Graphics
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > So Ill x On The Roam > 2021 > Photoshoot and Graphics
[Modeling, Advertising, and Promotional Work] > Electric Sunglasses > 2021 > Photoshoot and Graphics
[Public Appearances] > 2021 Appearances > Oct 19: “Ellen” Talk Show
[Public Appearances] > 2019 Appearances > October 24: ‘This Morning’ Show
[Public Appearances] > 2018 Appearances > November 28: ‘This Morning’ Show
[Film Productions] > Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
[Film Productions] > Dune
[Film Productions] > Slumberland
[Film Productions] > Zack Snyder’s Justice League
[Television Series] > Baywatch
[Television Series] > See > Season Two




 

 

Gallery Links:

[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2021 Shoots > Set 001
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2020 Shoots > Set 004
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2019 Shoots > Set 003




The most modern movie star on the planet shares his feelings on ‘Dune,’ his famous family, and social justice.

Gallery Link:
[Photoshoots & Portraits] > 2020 Shoots > Set 004

MEN’S HEALTH – ONE MORNING IN LATE JULY, in the Year of Whatever Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong And/Or Might Actually Kill You otherwise known as 2020, Los Angeles drivers westbound on the 118 were treated to a surreal sight even by California standards. There, in the slow lane of the freeway, a giant man was sputtering along in a 1929 Ford Model A hot rod with no roof and no windshield. His long, sandy-blond hair whipped across his face in the wind, and the red blanket he had placed over the busted car seat to cushion it was now flying like a cape behind his neck. Those who pulled up close to get a better look at a potential real-life Superman weren’t too far off the mark. It was Jason Momoa—Aquaman himself—behind the wheel, drumming on his knees to the Tom Waits song playing in his head while his car slowly broke down beneath him. Then, just as he neared his exit in the San Fernando Valley, radiator fluid began spraying all over his face. He was due at a photo shoot for this magazine in ten minutes.

“My wife makes fun of me all the time because everything I have breaks down,” he tells me when he arrives at the shoot only a few minutes behind schedule, freshly delivered to the set with a huge smile after hitching a ride with a buddy. He needs all of two minutes to peel off his stained shirt for a clean one and splash some water on his beard before he’s ready for the first shot, and one quickly surmises that Momoa is the type of guy to whom this kind of shit happens all the time. “I like old, beautiful things,” he says, shrugging off the roadside havoc. “It feels like you’re in a time capsule when you’re riding an old bike.”

But for all the old-man affection for classic racers and vintage Harleys, and for all the brick-house physicality that would’ve made him an outstanding ’80s action hero, Momoa has spent the past few years slowly revealing himself to be the most singular and surprising—the most modern, really—male movie star we’ve got. “I don’t do incognito,” he explains. “Here’s this flamboyant Cadillac I’ve had since I was 22, because I love Elvis. Here’s my top-hat collection, because I love top hats. Here’s my ridiculous pink fur coat. I have a lot of weird things.” Perhaps it’s because he used to go antiquing “all the time” with his mom that he appreciates well-made items and durable designs. “I can look at a rusty spoon,” he tells me, “and it defines who I am.”
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