Monroe Jackson Rathbone V is an American actor and musician known for his role as Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga series.
Early life
Rathbone was born in Singapore, the son of American parents Randee Lynn and Monroe Jackson Rathbone IV. He has three sisters, including ceramic artist Kelly Rathbone. Rathbone is distantly related to Civil War general Stonewall Jackson and British actor Basil Rathbone. His great-grandfather, Monroe Jackson Rathbone II, was the chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which later became Exxon. Because of his father's job at Mobil Oil, Rathbone has lived in many places including Norway, Indonesia, and Midland, Texas. He attended Trinity School of Midland and started out in local theater in Midland with the youth actors program "The Pickwick Players", initially doing musical theatre. For his junior and senior years of high school, Rathbone attended the Interlochen Arts Academy, a private school for the arts in Michigan, where he majored in acting. After graduation, he had planned to go to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, but after being rejected went instead to Los Angeles to experiment with film acting and to look for work.
Career
After being in Los Angeles for a short time, Rathbone was cast in Disney 411, where he interviewed up-and-coming personalities like Hilary Duff and the sister duo Aly & AJ. He also had guest roles on The O.C. and Close to Home. His film roles include work inMolding Clay, Pray for Morning, and Travis and Henry. In 2005, he got the role of Nicholas Fiske in ABC Family's original seriesBeautiful People. In a 2008 interview, he stated it was his first leading role and was his most difficult role to fit into. Rathbone also played a role in Criminal Minds as Adam and Amanda. In 2008, he played Jasper Hale in the film Twilight, based on the best-selling novel by Stephenie Meyer. He reprised his role in the sequels to Twilight, ', ' and and. In 2009, Rathbone played Jeremy in S. Darko. In addition to that role, he won kudos for his performance as a serial killer on Criminal Minds. Rathbone played the role of Sokka in The Last Airbender, a 2010 film based on Though the film was a commercial hit, it was universally panned by critics, particularly for Rathbone, a white actor, playing the role of an originally Inuit character. in Indianapolis, 2011 Rathbone formerly performed in a funk band called 100 Monkeys with two friends whom he met in high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, Ben Graupner and Ben Johnson, as well as close friends Jerad Anderson and M. Lawrence Abrams. Jackson plays the guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, mandolin, trumpet, harmonica and is on vocals. The band released three albums in 2009. In December 2009, 100 Monkeys began a 100-city tour that took them to nearly every state in the US by mid-2010. The band continued to tour into 2011 to coincide with the release of their new album, Liquid Zoo, which was released in June. The band headed overseas for their first international dates in winter 2011. Rathbone appeared in an episode of No Ordinary Family on November 9, 2010. In November 2010, it was reported he had been cast in the Warner Premiere and Dolphin Entertainment action comedy web seriesAim High alongside Aimee Teegarden. The show in which he portrays Nick Green, a high school junior who's just starting a new school year as one of the country's 64 highly trained teenage operatives, premiered on October 18, 2011, on Facebook being the first "social series" ever created. In May 2011, Rathbone began shooting Live at the Foxes Den, a film in which he plays the lead role of lawyer Bobby Kelly. In November 2014, Rathbone joined the cast of Pali Road. Rathbone has a production company, PatchMo Entertainment, and a record company, Happy Jack Records.
Personal life
Rathbone resides in Austin, TX and enjoys music, writing, singing and producing. Rathbone and his then girlfriend, Sheila Hafsadi, of Iraqi Jewish descent, had a son, Monroe Jackson Rathbone VI, on July 5, 2012. Close friend and Twilight co-star Nikki Reed is the godmother. He and Hafsadi married on September 29, 2013. On May 31, 2016, he and Hafsadi welcomed their second child, a daughter named Presley Bowie Rathbone. The couple were expecting a third child in late 2019. On December 31, they welcomed their third child, a son named Felix Valleau Rathbone. On September 18, 2014, Rathbone was on board JetBlue Flight 1416 en route from Long Beach, California to Austin, Texas when its engine exploded. The plane returned to Long Beach and made an emergency landing. There were four injuries, but all passengers survived.
Philanthropy
Rathbone is an honorary board member for Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged U.S. public schools. He has shown support for the organization in several ways, including donating a signed Twilight script for auction, visiting a Little Kids Rock classroom, and delivering instruments to students.
