--- name: "Jonas Ball" canonical: "https://film.one/person/jonas-ball" fi1m_id: "jonas-ball" imdb_id: "nm1383977" tmdb_id: 82124 roles: ["Actor"] born: "3 May 1975" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-10-01T20:03:09.588808+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Jonas Ball ## Identity Jonas Ball - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/jonas-ball - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** jonas-ball - **IMDb ID:** nm1383977 - **TMDB ID:** 82124 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1383977/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/82124 Actor. Born 3 May 1975 in Carmichael, California. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 3 May 1975, Carmichael, California - **Elsewhere:** https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1383977/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/82124 ## Fi1m on Jonas Ball > Jonas Ball has one performance most people know, and it is a good one: a soft, patient, reasonable Mark Chapman in *The Killing of John Lennon*. Nothing since has handed him a part that size, and the career is the thinner for it. The voice is what you remember. Ball speaks Mark Chapman's words over almost every minute of *The Killing of John Lennon* (2006) in a tone most people keep for explaining a parking ticket, and he never raises it. The face is soft, the eyes small and waiting, and he plays a man who has decided to be significant and is slightly impatient for the world to catch up. What unsettled us most was not the gun. It was the kitchen table in Honolulu, where he sits across from Gloria (Mie Omori) holding a secret and plainly enjoying it, and Omori lets the silences do the rest. That film is the spine of a career that does not otherwise have much of one. Before it there were a few television appearances and voice work on anime dubs. After it came Benjamin Keynes, a CIA officer running a Special Forces unit in Afghanistan in Daniel Myrick's *The Objective* (2008), then a long gap, then independent work: Nick, a Marine veteran with PTSD, in *In the Orchard* (2018); *Walnuts the Movie* (2024), which he wrote, directed and produced as well as starring in; a guest part as Nikolai in a 2025 episode of *The Rookie*. We have not reviewed those and will not pretend to a view of them. The Chapman performance remains the one that gets discussed, nearly twenty years on. What Ball does well is stillness with something behind it. He can make a man sitting quietly look like a man rehearsing, and that is a rarer skill than it sounds. The danger with that skill is obvious: it suits damaged men in small films, and small films are what he has been offered. The other problem was never his. Andrew Piddington gave him 114 minutes of Chapman's own words and nobody in the script to argue back, so the performance explains and explains and the film learns nothing from it. We scored it 57 and said he deserved better, and we still think so. If a director with a proper script ever finds him, we would like to see what the flat voice does when someone interrupts it. Until then he is an actor known for one careful, disturbing piece of work, which is more than most get and less than this one earned. ## Biography Jonas Ball is an American actor born on 3 May 1975 in Carmichael, California. He is known for portraying Mark David Chapman in the biographical film *The Killing of John Lennon* (2006). Ball appeared as CIA officer Benjamin Keynes in *The Objective* (2008). His other credits include the television series *The Rookie* and the films *In the Orchard* (2018) and *Walnuts the Movie* (2024). *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, themoviedb.org.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Killing of John Lennon* (2007), Fi1m 57, as Mark Chapman — [page](https://film.one/film/the-killing-of-john-lennon.md) ## Complete filmography (9) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Meanest Man in Texas* (2019), as Tommy Reis - *In The Orchard* (2019), as Nick - *The Rookie* (2018), series, as Nikolai - *The Early Inauguation* (2018), as John Dulles - *Radio Mary* (2017), Actor - *The Blind* (2009), as Marcus - *The Objective* (2008), as Benjamin Keynes - *The Killing of John Lennon* (2007), as Mark Chapman — Fi1m 57, [page](https://film.one/film/the-killing-of-john-lennon.md) - *Walnuts The Movie*, as Jerry Stax · Director, Writer --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jonas-ball