Caleb Landry Jones

Jones was born in Garland, Texas and was raised in Richardson, a suburb in Dallas.^[2][3] His father Patrick is a contractor and his mother Cindy is a special educator. He is the second of three brothers. His older brother served in the Marine Corps.^[4][5] Jones' maternal grandparents had played in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.^[5]

Jones attended Richardson High School, where his mother worked, and was encouraged to take ballet, tap, and theater classes.^[2] As a child, he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.^[5]

Acting

Jones discovered acting in speech class and began his professional acting career shortly afterward in a small role in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007).^[3] He then played a drummer in Friday Night Lights (2008–2010) and Walt Jr.'s best friend in Breaking Bad (2009–2010).^[3] In 2010, he had a supporting role in the supernatural horror film The Last Exorcism. He then played the mutant Banshee in X-Men: First Class (2011).

In 2012, he appeared in the action thriller film Contraband, which was an English-language remake of the Icelandic film Reykjavík-Rotterdam. In the same year, he played Frank in Neil Jordan’s horror film Byzantium, and had his first lead role in the science fiction horror film Antiviral, the feature-film debut of Brandon Cronenberg.

In 2017, he appeared consecutively in supporting roles in Doug Liman’s action comedy film American Made, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, Jordan Peele’s psychological horror film Get Out, and in the crime drama film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.^[6][7][8] All four films were critically acclaimed. In 2019, he played Ty Carter in the war drama film The Outpost.^[4]

In 2021, he starred as the Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant in Justin Kurzel's Nitram, for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.^[9]

In 2023, he portrayed the lead role in Luc Besson’s action thriller film Dogman. Besson praised Jones's transformative performance and expressed his fascination with the actor. This inspired Besson to cast Jones as the eponymous character in Dracula (2025). Besson was not particularly interested in the story of Dracula, but instead reimagined the film specifically around Jones.^[10][11]

Music

He began his music career as a drummer for the worship band in his local church.^[5] By the age of 17, he started writing songs on his Casio keyboard.^[5] At 19, he formed the experimental folk-rock band Robert Jones with Robert Hudson and A.J. Durham.^[12]

On 1 May 2020, Jones released his debut studio album, The Mother Stone,^[13] through Sacred Bones Records.^[14][15] He has since released three more albums: Gadzooks Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 in 2021 and 2022, and Hey Gary, Hey Dawn in 2024.

Jones is married to Russian artist Katya Zvereva.^[16][17] They have one child.^[18]