Alan Ritchson

Alan Ritchson is an American actor whose best-known television roles include Arthur Curry on *Smallville*, Thad Castle on *Blue Mountain State*, Hank Hall on *Titans*, and Jack Reacher on *Reacher*. Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1982, he grew up in Niceville, Florida. Before those roles, he appeared as a contestant during the third season of *American Idol* in 2004. He did not reach the finals, but the appearance was an early step in a career that moved through modeling, television, and film.

Ritchson first played Arthur Curry, also known as Aquaman, in the 2005 *Smallville* episode “Aqua” and returned to the role in later episodes. From 2010 to 2011, he starred as Thad Castle, the boastful captain of a college football team, in Spike’s comedy series *Blue Mountain State*. He reprised the part in the 2016 film *Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland*. The role made particular use of his willingness to play an imposing character as a comic absurdity.

His film work includes playing Gloss, a District 1 tribute, in *The Hunger Games: Catching Fire* (2013). He portrayed Raphael through performance capture in *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* (2014) and its 2016 sequel, *Out of the Shadows*. On DC’s *Titans*, which began in 2018, he played Hank Hall, the vigilante known as Hawk. In 2021, Ritchson made his feature-directing debut with *Dark Web: Cicada 3301*, a film he also co-wrote and appeared in.

Ritchson took the title role in Prime Video’s *Reacher* in 2022. The series adapts Lee Child’s novels about a former military police investigator who travels without a permanent home and repeatedly becomes involved in violent investigations. Its first season draws on *Killing Floor*, Child’s debut Reacher novel; the second draws on *Bad Luck and Trouble*; and the third draws on *Persuader*. The role brought Ritchson a substantially larger audience after years of supporting and ensemble work.

In 2023’s *Fast X*, he played Aimes, a senior figure in the Agency pursuing Dominic Toretto’s crew. He also starred opposite Hilary Swank in *Ordinary Angels* (2024), playing Ed Schmitt, a widowed father seeking a liver transplant for his young daughter. That same year, he portrayed Anders Lassen in Guy Ritchie’s *The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare*, a film inspired by a British wartime operation. Together, those projects show the range of his recent work: action franchises, a family drama, and a historical action film.