Joshua Jackson

Jackson was born in Vancouver to parents John and Fiona. His mother is a casting director. Jackson's father is from Texas,[2] and his mother is a native of Ballyfermot, Dublin, Ireland, having immigrated to North America in the late 1960s.[3][4] He has a younger sister, Aisleagh, and two older half brothers, Jonathan and Lyman.[5] He was raised Catholic.[6][7]

Jackson lived in California until the age of 8. He moved to Vancouver with his mother and younger sister. He attended Ideal Mini School and later switched to Kitsilano Secondary School. He attended high school with actor Ryan Reynolds.[8] In an interview with The New York Times, Jackson said he was kicked out of high school once because of The Jon Stewart Show: "[The show] played, at least where I grew up, at 1:30 in the morning, so I would stay up at night to watch Jon Stewart, but then I'd be too tired—or too lazy—to go to school in the morning. So I'd just take the first couple of classes off, 'cause I wanted to be fresh when I got there."[9]

Jackson at the premiere of Bobby, Toronto International Film Festival, 2006

Jackson started acting in a small role in the film Crooked Hearts in 1991. The next year, he played the role of Charlie in a musical version of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. At this point, with the help of the play's casting director Laura Kennedy, he joined the William Morris Agency.[10] Soon after, he landed the role of Charlie (#96) in The Mighty Ducks series, playing a young and aspiring hockey player.

Jackson went on to appear as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek, which was created by Kevin Williamson and ran on the WB network from 1998 to 2003, and also starred James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, and Katie Holmes.[11] While the show was on hiatus, he appeared in several movies including Cruel Intentions (an adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses that also starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe), The Skulls, The Safety of Objects, The Laramie Project and a short cameo in the remake of Ocean's Eleven in which he appears as himself in a poker scene with Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Holly Marie Combs, among others. In 2000, he also guest-starred in Season 12 of The Simpsons, voicing the character of Jesse Grass, a "hunky environmentalist" and love interest for Lisa Simpson in the episode "Lisa the Tree Hugger".[12] He also was cast as "Beau" in the movie Gossip in 2000 with actors James Marsden, Kate Hudson and Norman Reedus.

Shortly after Dawson's Creek ended in 2003, Jackson played the lead role in films alongside Dennis Hopper (Americano), Harvey Keitel (Shadows in the Sun), and Donald Sutherland (Aurora Borealis). In 2005, Jackson moved to the UK and made his stage debut on the London West End with Patrick Stewart in David Mamet's two-man play, A Life in the Theatre. The play was a critical and popular success, and ran from February to April of that year. Jackson said that he would consider returning to the stage, to try his hand on Broadway. His next film role was in Bobby, directed by Emilio Estevez, Jackson's co-star from The Mighty Ducks. He played a lead role in Shutter, a US remake of a Thai horror film of the same name. He starred and acted as executive producer in the Canadian independent film One Week, which opened on March 6, 2009.[13][14]

Jackson at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con

From 2008 to 2013, Jackson played the lead role of Peter Bishop in the science-fiction series Fringe,[15] created by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.[16] The series appeared on the Fox TV network and was the second-highest rated new show of the 2008–2009 season after CBS's The Mentalist. BuddyTV ranked him #9 on its "TV's 100 Sexiest Men of 2010" list,[17] #19 in 2011[18] and #14 in 2012.[19]

Jackson was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the film One Week.[20] He won the award on April 12, 2010.[21] He held and hosted the satirical Pacey-Con in 2010, directly across the street from the San Diego Comic-Con, sporting a bowling shirt and giving out fan fiction, written by Dawson's Creek fans, to those waiting in the Comic-Con entrance line. Footage of the event was recorded for a video, entitled 'Pacey-Con', which he was filming for Will Ferrell's Funny or Die celebrity humor website.[22] In 2013, Jackson appeared in the IFC film Inescapable with Marisa Tomei and Alexander Siddig.[23] Jackson wrote the first story from the comic book trilogy Beyond the Fringe, titled "Peter and the Machine".[24] Jackson starred in the successful Showtime television show, The Affair, where he played Cole Lockhart, the protagonist husband of the unfaithful Alison Lockhart.[25]

In March 2018, Jackson made his theatrical debut on Broadway in Children of a Lesser God, where he played James Leeds, an unconventional teacher at a school for the deaf who gets in a conflicted professional and romantic relationship with a former deaf student, Sarah Norman (Lauren Ridloff). The play ran through May 2018.[26]

In 2019, Jackson starred as defense attorney Mickey Joseph in the Netflix drama miniseries When They See Us.[27]

In 2020, Jackson co-starred with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington in Hulu's miniseries Little Fires Everywhere based on the novel by Celeste Ng.[28]

Jackson has been cast as Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon who was convicted of intentionally maiming his patients, in Dr. Death, based on the podcast of the same name.[29]

In 2022, Jackson was set to lead the Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction with Lizzy Caplan, inspired by the 1980s thriller film of the same name.[30]

Jackson with his wife, Jodie Turner-Smith in February 2020.

Jackson was in a relationship with Dawson's Creek co-star Katie Holmes during the first two seasons of the show's run. Holmes said that Jackson was her first love.[31]

From 2006 to 2016, he was in a relationship with German actress Diane Kruger.[32]

Jackson began a relationship with actress Jodie Turner-Smith in 2018. They married in December 2019 and have a daughter, born April 2020.[33][34]

He owns his childhood home in Topanga, California.[35] He previously lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Dawson's Creek was filmed; and in New York, where Fringe filmed its first season. In 2009, he moved back to Vancouver to shoot four seasons of the show before the last episode was aired on January 18, 2013.

Jackson is a fan of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.[36] He was arrested on November 9, 2002, at a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game in Raleigh, North Carolina, after a quarrel with a security guard. He was charged with assault, affray, and public intoxication and disruption, having a 0.14 blood alcohol content.[37] Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the assault charge, and Jackson agreed to attend an alcohol education program and perform 24 hours of community service in order to have the remaining charge dropped.[38]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Joshua Jackson.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joshua Jackson.

• Joshua Jackson at IMDb
• Joshua Jackson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Joshua Jackson on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos