Biography
Date of Birth
31 December 1982, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Height
5' 11" (1.8 m)
Mini Biography
Justin Chatwin is a Canadian actor and avid outdoors man, traveler, sailor, and spear fisherman. The British Columbia native currently resides in Baja, Mexico. Although mostly known for his work as an actor, his passion sits with conservation, international motorcycle travel and the outdoors.
Chatwin played the character of jimmy/Steve/jack on Showtime's Emmy nominated drama series "Shameless," which recently began filming its fifth season. The series, from John Wells and Paul Abbott, is based on the long-running hit UK series and also stars William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum.
Chatwin first garnered recognition for his starring role in the in the USA miniseries, "Traffic," directed by Stephen Hopkins. Based on his performance in the program, Newsweek magazine singled him out as an "Actor to Watch." Additional television credits includes a recurring role on showtime "Weeds", "Orphan black", "Dr. who" And Steven Spielberg's re-telling of the H.G. Wells classic, War of the Worlds, in which he starred opposite Tom Cruise.
Trivia
Justin has a sister named Brianna.
Starred in the play, "Dark Matters" [2006]
Motorcycles are his biggest passion.
As an adventure and travel enthusiast, he calls Bruce Chatwin his biggest inspiration. They are not related even though they share the same surname.
In 2016, he went on a motorcycle ride from Vancouver to Patagonia. That journey was depicted in the documentary series No Good Reason (2020).
Big animal lover. Has an Uruguayan street dog named Ombú, which he adopted in 2016.
Favorite cartoons as a child were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) and G.I. Joe (1985).
He is of French-Canadian ancestry on his late grandfather's side.
Trademarks:
Often plays characters who are drug addicts
Quotes
I trust you: That's huge. That's truth. That's real love. Everyone uses 'I love you' so loosely.
I just want to do shows because you get to see, over all the seasons, the person grow, and you get to grow with the character. That transformation, for me, is what I love about my job. I get to learn about myself and challenge myself and grow with the character. For me, it's a whole process of learning and growing.
You don't need to come from poverty to say growing up is tough. You can have everything in the world going for you and still feel the same loneliness and the same problems that a lot of kids have.
I really like 'Shameless' because it brings up important issues, but we get to talk and laugh and look at something that's really important that's a problem, like alcoholism and bad parenting. It's done in a funny, smart way.
'Shameless' is going to shake up television. Any drama is good drama. Bring it.
I didn't go to acting school.
I was completely open to learning about different aspects of Scientology... and I believe in a lot of it.
I think I went through my phase of feeling sort of invisible when I left my small hometown in Canada and moved to the big city of Vancouver. I kind of had to decide right there in that moment what I was going to do with the rest of my life and make a thousand decisions after finishing high school. Fortunately, I chose acting.
