For Jonny Coyne, there was never a Plan B in his journey to make it as an actor—no matter the cost.
“There’s no backup plan,” the 68-year-old Mandalorian and Grogu star emphasized over a recent Zoom call. “You can’t have a backup plan in this. The backup plan has got to be, ‘I’m prepared to do anything just to keep working as an actor.’ I’ve done some horrendous jobs trying to keep soul alive.”
And he really does mean anything.
While struggling to find steady acting jobs, a 30-year-old Coyne stocked shelves at Toys “R” Us, where he reported to a 17-year-old supervisor.
“You’ve got to humble yourself a little bit and accept that may be your fate temporarily,” he said in a message to aspiring thespians. “It might [even] be your entire lot forever. There’s no trajectory that says you will automatically become part of the Star Wars universe if you just keep at it. No, it doesn’t work like that.”
In fact, Coyne (a graduate of London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) is still trying to wrap his head around the surreal experience of joining one of the biggest media franchises in history as Imperial leftover Janu Coin.
“The Mandalorian came out of nowhere,” he recalled. “It was just offered to me … I would never have been an Imperial Lord in anybody’s eyes except for Jon Favreau’s, perhaps. It always amazes me what I end up doing. I’m by no means prolific, but I am always genuinely fascinated by how some people decide to cast me and what’s next for me.”
His galactic victory lap has been a long time coming after years of taking any gig that came along. After all, you can’t exactly be picky when you’re a struggling artist.
The internal mantra, Coyne revealed, was, “’Just keep going and whatever happens, happens.’ I was not career-minded in any way. I was just interested in working and getting the next job. But I always had this fear behind me that it could all come to an end after the next one.”
Thankfully, that dreaded curtain-closer never came to pass as he relocated to Los Angeles from his native London and established a reputation with projects like the J.J. Abrams-produced Alcatraz. Despite the show’s short-lived run on Fox in 2012, Coyne’s turn as Alcatraz Warden Edwin James represented a major turning point.
“That kind of changed my career and changed my life a little bit,” he said. “Because suddenly, people were giving me a second look.”
Indeed, there eventually came a point where he could focus on acting full-time, and that’s been the case for the better part of two decades now. “Fifteen years of being an actor, and just being an actor,” he proudly declared. “It’s kind of nice to know that for the first time in my life, I can survive on acting.”
Whether it’s a massive blockbuster movie or a network TV show, Coyne is simply grateful to be doing what he loves for a living.
“All film production seems big to me,” he said. “I’m amazed at the level of work that goes involved in any kind of movie, any kind of TV show. I don’t know that I can discern the difference between a TV production and film production. To me, it’s all amazing. There’s a tremendous amount of people and talent involved in the making of either of them.”
Coyne, who is perfectly comfortable describing himself as a character actor, exhibits an understated, chameleon-like versatility that has allowed him to brush shoulders with the likes of Sean Penn (Gangster Squad), John Goodman (The Hangover Part III), Jon Hamm (Beirut), Kevin Bacon (The Toxic Avenger), and the late Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom).
He enjoys playing with the big dogs, but is humbly content to remain just outside the main spotlight. “I think I’d be a terrible star because I would make all the wrong decisions,” he mused. “If I had a choice of scripts in front of me, I would choose the wrong one. The best thing about my career is the fact that other people decide what they like about me, and then they put me there.”
Of course, that’s not to say he doesn’t have a dream role or two in mind.
“I’d like to play something romantic, something sensitive,” the actor admitted. “I’d like to get to kiss the girl … I’d like to show that I can be sensitive and warm and all those things that nobody ever thinks I am.”
He concluded: “I’ll take whatever gives me a little bit of joy. I do turn things down, but I will do anything that makes me happy. I have grandchild now, and I’d like to know that if he ever gets to see me in something, he’ll be proud of it.”